San Bernardino County is experiencing two simultaneous, yet entirely different, economic recoveries. In one, tech hubs and logistics centers boom, creating six-figure jobs and revitalizing suburbs. In the other, a parallel reality exists where education remains stubbornly low and median income has stagnated for a decade. A first-of-its-kind geographic analysis of U.S. Census data maps this economic split street-by-street, revealing a county divided by opportunity.
As we can see from the data shown in the table above there is a correlation between median household income as well as education level. The two highest earning cities in San Bernardino County is San Antonio Heights and Chino Hills with a median household income of $144,509 and $122,600 respectively. Both cities also happen to have the highest percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree within San Bernardino County with San Antonio Heights being at 42.5% and Chino Hills being at 44.8%.
This correlation between the education level of a city and the median income remains generally true throughout the rest of the data, but there are a few outliers that stand out. For example, the city of Phelan has a very low percent of adults with a bachelor’s degree with it being only 7.5% which is in the bottom five of San Bernardino cities, meanwhile the median household income is $83,759 which barely puts it inside of the top 15 highest earning cities within San Bernardino. On the flip side, Twentynine Palms ranks number 16th when it comes to percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree at 22.3%, however the city also ranks dead last in terms of median household income at a low $56,000.
The point that I am trying to illustrate is that although there is a correlation between median household income and education level it does not mean that a higher education level equals higher household median income. There are simply too many other variables that must be accounted for that influence income level. For example, the household income considers everyone in the household and not just one person. That means that the household can either have one or more bachelor’s degree earners, and some households may have none. This directly influences household income because households with two adults with a bachelor’s degree would make more than a household with only one or no adults who have a bachelor’s degree. Another variable that the data does not account for is the population of the city.
San Bernardino cities with a lower population are more prone to skewed data and outliers. For example. The city of San Antonio Heights has the lowest population amongst the cities listed in the table. It also happens to be the city with the highest household median income; in fact, it is over $20,000 higher than the second place Chino Hills. Since the population of San Antonio Heights is so low it is easier to skew the numbers one way or another, so one could argue that if the population of San Antonio Heights increased then the median household income would decrease.
Overall, there is a noticeable disparity amongst the different cities within San Bernardino County, and for the most part it is tied to education level within the cities, but with this in mind we must also consider other variables such as population and household members.