Utah Poverty and Income for 2009

We have been exploring US Census data for Utah and are going to have several postings detailing our findings, with this the first such post.

The highest median income rates per county in Utah are mostly congregated around the corridor of the northern Wasatch mountains to include Utah, Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Morgan, and Summit counties. Sadly, the lowest is San Juan County, but it is no surprise that the most metropolitan counties have the highest median income levels, commensurate with job availability, though Morgan County defies that a bit. Both the cities of Morgan and Mountain Green have seen a lot of housing growth over the past several years and prices are high, which excludes buyers who have a lower income level.


Here we see the poverty levels of each county, expressed as a percentage of the population. Some of the interesting items of note are that Cache County tends to have a higher poverty rate and lower median income than the surrounding counties. One of the other interesting items is the higher levels of poverty in both Salt Lake and Utah counties.

Below is a scatter plot showing the relationship between median income levels and poverty rates. As you’d expect, as a county moves further to the right on the X-axis (to higher median income levels), poverty rates tend to be lower too. San Juan County is a major outlier on the Y-axis (poverty rate) and, interestingly, has almost the same median income level as Piute County with a significantly higher poverty rate. Also notice that Cache County, in the middle bunching, has the highest median income rate and the highest poverty rate of that grouping with Dagget County being somewhat of an outlier (lower poverty rate for its median income level) from that group.