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High income
Want to go where the money is? These metro areas have residents with the highest annual incomes.
Rank Metro area Per-capita income Per-capita income growth (2002-2007)
1 Bridgeport, CT $81,576 36%
2 Naples, FL $63,276 50%
3 San Francisco, CA $60,983 32%
4 Vero Beach, FL $59,419 49%
5 San Jose, CA $59,338 30%
6 Washington, DC $54,971 29%
7 Boston, MA $53,443 26%
8 Midland, TX $52,974 63%
9 New York City, NY $52,855 31%
10 Casper, WY $52,543 55%
11 Trenton, NJ $52,255 25%
12 Boulder, CO $51,388 28%
13 Napa, CA $51,218 35%
14 Seattle, WA $49,401 29%
15 Santa Cruz, CA $48,337 29%
16 Hartford, CT $48,330 27%
17 Bradenton, FL $48,255 29%
18 Barnstable Town, MA $47,640 26%
19 Santa Barbara, CA $47,302 46%
20 Minneapolis, MN $46,752 23%
21 Denver, CO $46,682 20%
22 Houston, TX $46,471 35%
23 Santa Rosa, CA $46,325 27%
24 Baltimore, MD $45,887 28%
25 Oxnard, CA $45,694 33%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Local Area Personal Income 2007.
Best Places Winners
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The factors that matter most to me are:
 Affordable wages  Few foreclosures
 Educated workers  Low housing costs
 Low crime  High local incomes
 A growing economy  Population growth
 Growing small business population

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How we picked the Best Places
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.