Last March, the Kansas City Business Journal picked up on Esri’s demographic data and used it to identify the ten wealthiest ZIP codes in the metro. Wealth in this case is not defined strictly by income, but rather, by a combination of several factors. These affluent ZIP codes are shown in the following map.
Thank you Business Journal. Anyone for tennis?
What about areas with the least amount of “wealth”?
The map below shows the ten census tracts with the highest percentage of poverty.
Generally speaking, the maps show that the most-wealthy among us tend to live in Johnson County along state line, with a few pockets of high wealth near the plaza, west of Lenexa, and the lakes area of central Jackson County. The poorest among us are mostly clustered in and around downtown KCK, across the river east and southeast of downtown KCMO, and in the southeast KCMO around the area of the Bannister Complex.
The two maps show—again, in a general way—where wealth and poverty have settled in across the region. Direct comparisons of the maps is not recommended because one uses ZIPs as the area units, and the other census tracts. Still, you can reasonably conclude from them that wealth is mostly south and suburban, and poverty is mostly central and urban. No surprise, really.
KC MAPPING & GIS 