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This page was created to test the proposition that Tallahassee is the most economically segregated city in America. As part of this exercise Census 2000 (Median Household Income in 1999) and ACS 2009 - 2013 (Median Household Income in 2013) census tract data were taken and compared to see changes between 2000 and 2013.
The data used for this exercise is the 2000 Census and ACS 2009 -- 2013 which are available in the Data Repository along with the shapefiles for 2000 and 2013. Note that in 2000 Leon County had 48 Tracts and in 2013 there are 68 Tracts.
In order to make meaningful comparisons, the 1999 Median Household Income was converted to 2013 Constant Dollars using a CPI adjustment factor of 1.3983 (Source:BLS). Figure 1 shows the Index (indexed to census tract with lowest income > 0) of median income by Census Tract for 1999 and 2013. As the figure shows, there has been no changes in census tract median income between 2000 and 2013.
Figure 1. Median Income Index (2000 and 2013)
Figure 2 shows the distribution of Median Income based on the Index of the census tract with the lowest income. As the figure shows, a significant number of Census Tracts (three out of four) have median incomes at least 2.5 times the lowest median income.
Figure 2. Median Income Index Distribution (2000 and 2013)
In order to determine the spatial distribution of Income, the 2013 data was mapped to 2013 census tract shapefiles from the Census Bureau and Figure 3 shows the median income by Census Tract and Figure 4 shows the pattern of income distribution as indexed to the census tract with the lowest income. As expected, most of the highest incomes in Leon County is clustered towards the North and East with some census tracts having incomes upto 10 to 11 times the base income.
Figure 3. Median Income by Tract (2013)
Figure 4. Median Income Index (2013)
The data shows a clear spatial distribution of income with higher incomes clustered to the North and East of the county. Spatial trends were not possible since the Census 2000 shapefile tract numbers does not seem to correspond with the Income files that were downloaded from AFF2. However, when looking at Figure 1 it indicates that the tracts (relative to the lowest income tract) did not change between 2000 and 2013.
All data used in this analysis are in the repository. Look at the Data and MXD branches of the repository to access the original data/shapefiles and the map files respectively.