Art Woolf is a columnist for VTDigger. He recently retired as an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont.
Despite its role as the financial and population center of Vermont, Chittenden County is not home to the richest town in the state. That position goes to Norwich, with a median family income of $157,800 in 2018.
Why is Norwich’s income so high? It’s home to many highly paid professionals who work at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a short drive across the Connecticut River.
Most of the other high-income towns in Vermont are in Chittenden County. Shelburne and Charlotte rank second and third, with median incomes of $132,200 and $129,700, respectively. And of the 17 Vermont towns with median income over $100,000, nine are in Chittenden County and fourteen are within a 40-mile drive of Burlington.
The Vermont Tax Department, the source of this data, defines a family as taxpayers who file either as married filing jointly or head of household. The former are married couples, who could be working or retired, with or without children at home. The latter are single parent families. There are about 118,000 married couple families and 27,500 single parent families in Vermont. Combined, about 70% of all Vermonters live in those types of families. The balance either live by themselves or with roommates.
In contrast to the wealthy towns in the Burlington area, at the other end of the spectrum are Vermont’s towns and cities with low median incomes. The lowest income town with any sizeable population is Wells River in the Northeast Kingdom, about 40 miles up the Connecticut River from Norwich. Its median family income is $37,600, just about half the statewide median of $73,800 and one-quarter that of Norwich.
Most of the other towns with low family incomes are also in the Northeast Kingdom, but many of Vermont’s traditional cities also have incomes less than the state median. Bennington and Newport City have median incomes well below the state median, at less than $50,000.
Other cities with relatively low incomes are St. Johnsbury ($52,400), Barre City ($55,100), and Springfield ($56,600.) Brattleboro, Rutland City, St. Albans City, and Winooski are all around $60,000. Of all the state’s traditional cities, only Middlebury ($88,300) and Burlington ($83,000) are above the state median. White River Junction, part of Hartford Town ($75,300) is just barely above the state median.
Although many of these cities have relatively low incomes, the surrounding suburbs are home to much higher income families. For example, St. Albans Town’s median family income is $16,000 higher than St. Albans City, Rutland Town’s is $27,000 higher than Rutland City, and Barre Town’s is $25,000 higher than Barre City. Similarly, just about every Chittenden County community, except for Winooski and Milton, has a higher median income than Burlington.
That pattern is no different than what we find at the national level. The major difference is that Vermont’s cities, by national standards, are tiny — they’d be small towns in any other state. But the same factors — school quality, condition of the housing stock, the level of municipal services, taxes, and the desire to live near other families with similar incomes — that have led to wealthier suburbs surrounding poorer cities nationally are present in Vermont.
