The 10 Richest Cities in West Virginia for 2023
In this article, we’ll look at the top 10 richest cities in West Virginia and explore some of the demographic statistics of each to see if we can find out why they are the richest.
Before we get started, let’s talk about how we determine “the richest cities” by explaining how we calculate it.
We use the mean household income for each city, which can be found on the latest American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. The ACS is an ongoing survey conducted by the US Census Bureau and, because it’s updated yearly, is more up-to-date that the Decennial Survey.
The latest year we have ACS data for is.
Using the mean (or average) household income, we only really have two criteria to determine the richest cities:
- The city must have a population of at least 500 people.
- The margin of error provided by the Census Bureau for the city must be less than 50% of the mean household income estimate.
Richest Cities in West Virginia
If you’re in a rush and just want to see the top 10 cities in West Virginia, here they are, sorted by the highest average household income.
| Rank | City | County | Mean Income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Hills | Wood County | $145,735.00 |
| 2 | Kabletown | Jefferson County | $132,945.00 |
| 3 | Shepherdstown | Jefferson County | $114,240.00 |
| 4 | Bridgeport | Harrison County | $111,449.00 |
| 5 | West Union | Doddridge County | $101,600.00 |
| 6 | Hannan | Mason County | $100,178.00 |
| 7 | Winfield | Putnam County | $99,920.00 |
| 8 | Maple | Doddridge County | $99,780.00 |
| 9 | Eastern | Monongalia County | $98,863.00 |
| 10 | Charles Town | Jefferson County | $98,363.00 |
Demographic Statistics for the 10 Richest Cities in West Virginia
Now that we’ve seen the top 10 cities in West Virginia, let’s take a look at some of the demographic statistics for each city.
We’ll focus on the top 10 richest cities in West Virginia to see if there any similarities or differences between them.
Household Income by Age
In the table below, we can compare the household income by age for each of the cities.
Scroll to view the entire table
| City | Under 25 | 25 to 44 | 45 to 64 | 65 and Over |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Hills | $0.00 | $134,375.00 | $116,458.00 | $126,250.00 |
| Kabletown | $0.00 | $125,119.00 | $142,692.00 | $91,136.00 |
| Shepherdstown | $0.00 | $90,461.00 | $113,875.00 | $71,339.00 |
| Bridgeport | $0.00 | $91,477.00 | $118,365.00 | $60,219.00 |
| West Union | $0.00 | $98,750.00 | $0.00 | $42,083.00 |
| Hannan | $0.00 | $38,138.00 | $96,411.00 | $0.00 |
| Winfield | $0.00 | $83,750.00 | $84,792.00 | $68,810.00 |
| Maple | $0.00 | $84,792.00 | $75,774.00 | $73,542.00 |
| Eastern | $22,300.00 | $68,260.00 | $96,435.00 | $51,524.00 |
| Charles Town | $0.00 | $105,634.00 | $75,476.00 | $54,457.00 |
Note than any fields showing as $0 are because the data was not available from the latest ACS.
We can see from the data above that the most common age bracket for the richest cities in West Virginia is 25 to 44, with 40.00% of the top earners falling into this age bracket.
The list below shows all of the top age brackets for the richest cities in West Virginia.
- 40.00% of the richest cities in West Virginia were aged 25 to 44
- 60.00% of the richest cities in West Virginia were aged 45 to 64
Race and Ethnicity
We can also look at the race and ethnicity for the richest cities in West Virginia. To do that, we created averages for each race reported for the city by the ACS survey.
The chart below shows the most common races living in the richest cities in West Virginia:
- 90.08% White
- 2.92% Black/African American
- 2.81% Hispanic
- 1.88% Two or more races
- 1.86% Asian
- 0.44% Other
- 0.01% Native
This shows that the most common race across the richest cities in West Virginia is “White”.
Education Levels
Another interesting demographic to look at would be the education levels of the people living in the richest cities in West Virginia.
Just like we did with the race and ethnicity numbers, we can create averages for each of the education levels the Census Bureau tracks for each city, by summing them and dividing by the number of cities we’re comparing.
The chart below shows the most common education level of people living in the richest cities in West Virginia:
- Bachelor’s degree 38.92%
- High school diploma or equivalent 29.39%
- Master’s degree or higher 20.86%
- Some college or associate’s degree 8.93%
- Less than high school diploma 1.90%
The data shows that 59.78% of people living in the richest cities in West Virginia have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has given you some interesting insights into why the richest cities in West Virginia are so wealthy based on the common demographics between them.
In the future, we will try to add more data to this article and pull out more interesting insights from the information.
