This Portland-area town tops list, Central Oregon town has lowest median income.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
A Portland-area town topped 24/7 Wall St.’s list of the richest towns in Oregon.
The Oregonian wrote that “the town at the top will likely surprise a lot of people.”
Happy Valley has more often been in the news for its unprecedented over-development just before the Great Recession, and subsequent real estate collapse. Images of empty subdivisions are rooted in many Oregonians’ minds when it comes to Happy Valley. But 24/7 Wall St. found Happy Valley’s median income of $92,773 to be tops in Oregon. At the other end of the spectrum: Prineville, long one of the areas with the highest unemployment in the state, and a median income of $29,959.
The gap between richest small town and poorest small town puts Oregon about in the middle of the pack nationally, the website said.
(SOURCE: OregonLive.com)
The study was taken from Census information and ranked the richest town in each state. The No. 1 was Mountain Brook, Ala. with a town median household income of $131,281.
The site wrote this about Happy Valley, which was ranked No. 36:
In Happy Valley, the median household income was $42,544 greater than the median household income in all of Oregon. On the spectrum of income inequality, Oregon falls almost directly in the middle compared with other states. The difference between the median household income in Prineville, the state’s poorest town, and the median household income in Happy Valley is $62,814, the 24th smallest gap in the country.
(SOURCE: 24/7 Wall St.)
RELATED NEWS: Closing the Gap: The two Oregons and the way forward
