Marin County tallied the highest median income among all counties in California in 2013, according to new figures released last week by the state’s Franchise Tax Board. In 2013, the county’s median income was $57,224 for individual tax returns and $133,389 for joint returns.
Marin has led the state in this category as far back as the tax board’s public archive goes—since 1999—and the latest data is the highest median-income mark the county has enjoyed during that entire period. Median income is computed to give a sense of how much income a typical taxpayer makes, and economists tend to view it as a barometer for how a local economy may be performing. Still, many analysts say the latest figures paint an incomplete picture.
“We have no idea about how wealthy households are,” said Robert Eyler, the executive director of the Marin Economic Forum. Income data collected in affluent cities in southern Marin disproportionately drive up the county’s overall median-income figure, he said. As a result, the data does not accurately represent the entire scope of the county’s motley regional economies, especially those in North and West Marin.
Vast disparities also exist within individual regions. In 2013, the United States Census Bureau recorded a median household income in Point Reyes Station of $40,000. But that figure was dwarfed by nearby Stinson Beach, which in the same year notched a $105,192 median-household income.
“That tells you how wide the disparities are,” Mr. Eyler said. “[Marin] acts as a suburb, as you will, of the larger Bay Area.”
What draws people to Marin, Mr. Eyler said, is the prospect of a desirable quality of life beyond, but not too far away from, the big city: good schools, rural character and a quick trip to the coast. Increasingly, Marin has become the domain of older, educated people who earn their incomes from high-paying jobs in San Francisco, and who—aside from pension receipts—do not generate income within the county itself.
In West Marin, a large share of income is generated by tourism, which, according to the West Marin Chamber of Commerce’s president, Ramon Cadiz, has become an economic driver that has outpaced the region’s traditional agriculture industry.
“Tourism continues to grow as a sector here,” Mr. Cadiz said. “It may be what you’re seeing is that locals are finally figuring out a way to tap the tourist vein here in ways that they haven’t before.”
Mr. Cadiz said he has heard anecdotally that revenues in West Marin have risen by at least 10 percent since last year. He said that money is tied to increased lodging, whose demand is driven by tourists and vacationers eager to enjoy the Point Reyes National Seashore. (According to Mr. Cadiz, lodging providers make up around two-thirds of the chamber’s membership.)
“We’re in the era now where not only do you have the [seashore], but you have a profusion of accommodations,” he said. “You definitely do have a housing shift toward vacation rentals.”
Data released by the seashore last month echoed the rising role of lodging near national parks. According to the economic report, titled “2014 National Park Visitor Spending Effects,” the Point Reyes National Seashore counted nearly 2.5 million visitors last year, the majority of whom arrived from locales 60 miles or more away.
Visitors to the seashore spent $29.3 million on hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfast lodging, the most out of any of the visitor-spending categories reported by the park. In total, the park’s report states, visitors spent over $100 million in West Marin, financing over 1,000 local jobs.
Still, many pockets of Marin continue to suffer from economic and social inequality. Heather Ravani, the director of the human services division of Marin Health and Human Services, emphasized that over 900 homeless people inhabit the county, with children representing nearly 200 of them. And nearly 1,000 children are currently waitlisted to receive subsidized childcare.
Ms. Ravani estimates that a family of four must accrue at least $100,000 just to “make it”—to cover basic needs, like rent and food— in Marin; she pointed to high rent, expensive early education and out-of-reach health costs as a few of the blockades that prevent a household from obtaining economic security.
“While I believe that it’s super important that we’ve been recognized as one of the healthiest and wealthiest communities in the nation, I think it’s also important to remember that many, many people in our community don’t share in this good fortune,” Ms. Ravani said.
In particular, limited access to early education and childcare represents as a major hindrance to economic advancement within Marin’s poorer communities. By Ms. Ravani’s count, 30 percent of Marin families cannot afford to pay for proper childcare, and 35 percent of children do not attend preschool. The result is that many children begin primary school at a great educational disadvantage, so much so that 66 percent of third graders in poor communities do not possess up-to-par reading proficiency.
“We have areas in our community where people are struggling, where they aren’t making that [median] money,” she said. “There is a whole other part of Marin that we need to pay attention to, and we need to raise those families up.”
Between 2000 and 2013, the number of Latinos living in Marin remained virtually unchanged, hovering just a speck below 40,000 people, according to the census bureau. But the Latino population in Point Reyes Station during that time increased by almost a third—from 155 to 232.
The results of this demographic shift manifest in West Marin’s largest public-education purveyor, Shoreline Unified School District, which now hosts a student population that is 50 percent Latino. And although the county’s overall attitude toward Latino immigrants has “softened considerably,” said Tom Wilson, the director of San Rafael’s Canal Alliance, Latinos in Marin continue to be dramatically under-served and under-represented.
“When you think about the median income, there are many people we work with who earn $10,000 a year or less,” said Mr. Wilson, whose organization offers mental health support, work readiness and technology skills to 3,500 clients. “There is a huge, huge difference between the median and the Latino population.” Annually, the alliance helps file between 500 and 600 tax returns for clients, and in West Marin it works with promotora and compañera advocates to coordinate both mental health and childbirth services.
Above all, Mr. Wilson said, this under-served population struggles with managing stress levels, acquiring skills to access vital community resources and finding and holding down jobs. To make a living, many in the Latino community find low-income work in the expensive households that make Marin’s median income the highest in the nation.
It’s an ironic twist that Mr. Wilson said may also be helping to improve social relationships across the socioeconomic gap, as many house cleaners, landscapers and nannies come to form lasting relationships with their employers.
“Making that personal connection with people begins to melt away all of those racial, class tensions,” he said. “There’s a chasm wider than the ocean, really, between those two worlds. But the one thing I’ve seen that brings people together is to have a direct interpersonal connection.”