Introduction

This blog post explores spatial autocorrellation for median gross rent and median household income for census tracts in Virginia. Data comes from Social Explorer (https://www.socialexplorer.com/explore-tables), 5-year estimate survey data for both income and rent.

We expect to see high levels of income and rent in areas outside of the cities, particularly suburbs in Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads (https://dmz1.dhcd.virginia.gov/HB854/part-1-markets.html), and smaller levels of both in small market areas (Southwestern Virginia particularly). We also expect to find the areas of clear positive autocorrellation to be in North Virginia and the Southwestern/Western region.

Rent, in a sense, serves as a proxy for below-median income and small household families in this analysis. This is because, in most cases, renters earn smaller wages. This is particularly true in smaller markets, and especially true in rural markets (https://dmz1.dhcd.virginia.gov/HB854/part-3-rental.html).

Additionally,renters tend to be made up of small household sizes in all three market sizes. From 2010 to 1019, about 40% of renters lived in one-person household sized spaces, and just under 30% in two-person sized spaces.