Maryland's lowest-income House district is not its least educated

In District 16, the typical household earns at least as much as the Census Bureau's survey will report. The survey stops reporting median household income at $250,001. District 16 hits that ceiling, the highest of any House district or subdistrict in Maryland.

It is also the district where college degrees are most common. Among adults in their mid-twenties and older there, 85.9% hold at least a bachelor's degree, according to the Census Bureau's newest multiyear American Community Survey estimates.

Those estimates show how differently the districts that elect Maryland's state lawmakers are built.

A wide spread in college degrees

The comparison covers 71 House districts and subdistricts. The count runs higher than the number of legislative districts because a district can be carved into smaller delegate subdistricts (mgaleg.maryland.gov). The districts were adopted on Feb. 1, 2022, based on population changes reported in the 2020 Census (planning.maryland.gov). When the state planning department posted its table of delegates by district, it noted that the maps were the subject of litigation that had not yet been resolved (planning.maryland.gov).

At the bottom of that map, the lowest share of adults in their mid-twenties and older with a bachelor's degree is 15.7%. Set against District 16, that is a gap of 70.2 percentage points between the most and least educated parts of the state.

Most districts fall well short of the top. In the middle district, about 2 in 5 adults in that age group have a bachelor's degree or more. Only 21 districts and subdistricts have degree holders at least as common as adults without a degree.

The spread is just as sharp for advanced degrees. The share of adults with a graduate or professional degree runs from 57% in the highest district to 5% in the lowest, about 1 in 20.

Income follows, up to a ceiling

District 40 sits at the other end of the income rankings. Its median household income is $57,143, the lowest of any House district or subdistrict in the state. Its share of adults with a bachelor's degree, 28.4%, is well under the statewide middle but not the lowest.

The top income in Maryland's House districts is at least 4.4 times the bottom one. That is a floor on the gap, not the full measure: District 16's true figure sits somewhere at or above the survey's cap. The middle district reports a median household income of $128,605.

Education and income tend to move together across the map. Districts with more degree holders generally report higher household incomes, though the pattern is not exact, as District 40 shows.

Equal seats, unequal districts

For Marylanders in the suburbs of greater Washington and everywhere else in the state, the district lines decide which neighbors share a ballot. The populations behind those lines were adjusted under Maryland's "No Representation Without Population Act" of 2010 (planning.maryland.gov).

Whatever their place in these rankings, the districts carry equal weight in the legislature. District 16, with the most degrees and the highest income, and District 40, with the lowest income, each elect a state senator and the same number of delegates (mgaleg.maryland.gov).

About the data

We used the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey multiyear estimates for Maryland's 71 state House districts and subdistricts. For each, we compared the share of adults in their mid-twenties and older with a bachelor's degree or higher, the share with a graduate or professional degree, and median household income, ranking the districts and taking the unweighted median across them as the midpoint.

• These are survey estimates with margins of error, so districts with close values may not truly differ.
• The survey caps median household income at a set ceiling, so the top district's real figure, and the true income gap, may be larger.
• The education figures cover adults in their mid-twenties and older, not registered or likely voters, and the data cannot say why districts differ.

House subdistrict: a smaller piece of a Maryland legislative district that elects some of the district's delegates on its own. Median household income: the midpoint income, with equal numbers of a district's households earning more and earning less. American Community Survey: the Census Bureau's ongoing survey of households, pooled over several years to produce estimates for small areas like legislative districts.

Sources

• The publisher's Socrata open-data portal (named with each dataset): Maryland House Legislative Districts-Socioeconomic Characteristics, 2024 ACS 5-Year Estimates, latest period 2026-09-24, released Sept. 24, 2026; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data