In Columbus, income of $127,500 ranks in top 5%; in Franklin County, $160,600
If rich means having more money than most of your neighbors, its definition would vary widely in central Ohio.
Delaware County's wealthiest households have incomes of at least $260,000 a year, according to the latest census numbers. That's more than twice what it takes to be in the top 5 percent of households in Franklin County.
But many people in those upper brackets would hesitate to call themselves rich.
"No one thinks they're wealthy," said Brookings Institution scholar Matt Fellowes. "We're surrounded with images of wealth today, and it makes us feel we're not as wealthy as we are."
In Columbus, the richest 20 percent of households earn $75,500 or more. But when you throw in the suburbs and measure the top 20 percent in Franklin County, it takes $90,600 to make the cut.
The richest 5 percent earn at least $127,500 in Columbus and $160,600 in Franklin County.
But many say it can't be so.
Rich, they say, are resident billionaires such as Limited founder Leslie H. Wexner or the 78 local executives who earned $1 million or more in 2006.
Even Gov. Ted Strickland and Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman each earn $145,000.
Outside of the Cup O'Joe coffeehouse in Clintonville on Friday, Ellen Petito discovered that she was richer than 80 percent of Franklin County.
"Which is ridiculous, I don't believe it," she said. "That paper, with that lying census stuff on it you have, cannot be right. Everyone I know makes more money than we do."
Petito lives in New Albany. "But we rent," she said. Her household income is about $91,000 a year.
An orthopedic hip- and knee-implant sales representative from Westerville said he "never really thought about what it means to be rich."
"I'm in the top 5 percent, and I guess I figured we would be, but I never thought of us as being rich," said John Warren, 56, wearing bright blue scrubs as he left the La Chatelaine French Bakery in Worthington with a Caesar salad.
Going out to dinner often and helping his two kids earn college degrees have been perks of life in the upper income bracket, but Warren said he still doesn't get everything he wants.
"I wish I could find myself with enough money to retire in a year, but I can't," he said. "And we can't just go off to Europe on a moment's notice. When we were young we would do it, instead of saving. Maybe we thought we were rich then."
In central Ohio, Franklin County's wealthiest families trail their counterparts in Licking and Delaware counties. But they are at least $13,000 a year ahead of the top 5 percent in Fairfield County and about $14,000 ahead of the same slice statewide.
Micki Soulen, a Columbus mother of two college graduates, said she considers herself in the "middle, middle, middle" class.
"I would have never imagined I'd be in the top 20 percent, but I am," she said. "We are a very low-income county in my mind then."
Fellowes, from Brookings, said there's good reason that people hesitate to call themselves wealthy.
"Statistically, the cost of living has outpaced wages, and that's caused financial insecurity to increase," he said. "There's been wage stagnation for those without a college degree for most of 20 years, and wages have actually declined for those without a high-school degree. It's been hard to meet their daily costs of living."
Jared Bernstein of the research group Economic Policy Institute agreed. "There's no widely accepted definition of middle class. So we economists are left to make it up."
Nationwide, the average family in the middle-income bracket earned $60,000 last year, he said, "but there's big regional variation in this; $60,000 gets you a lot further in some places than it does on the coasts."
"It's a fussy concept," Bernstein said. "Most people think of themselves as middle class, and they're probably right about that."
So who is rich?
The Congressional Budget Office said that in 2004, the average income of the top 10 percent of families was $300,000. For the top 5 percent, it was $440,000; for the top 1 percent, $1.3 million. Bernstein said those numbers likely have jumped a lot.
But for many, being either rich or middle class is more a state of mind than a bank balance.
"Millionaires think long-term. The middle class thinks short-term," wrote Keith Cameron Smith in The Top 10 Distinctions between Millionaires and the Middle Class, released on the Internet in August. "Millionaires talk about ideas. The middle class talks about things and other people."
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