Median Household Income, USA

This map of the USA (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) shows the fluctuation of household income across the United States in 2013. The basis of the American dream is self fulfilment and building your way up in society to improve you and your family's standard of living. This means making money.

It is hard not to use stereotypes when discussing the findings and meanings gathered from this map. For instance, as expected, based on the stereotype, the majority of the Southern, former Confederate states have household incomes in the lower income bracket than other areas of the country. While there are some spurts of wealth in the Southern cities, such as Houston, Texas, this is the same in the cities in most other states.
The East coast, metropolitan cities, like New York, Boston and Washington D.C, contain a significantly higher proportion of wealth than the 'Deep South' and most of Eastern side of the country. However, the further South you go down the East coast, the poorer it gets, which suggests the wealth is predominantly Northern based, rather than Eastern.
Historically, this has often been the case. During the early 20th Century, there was a mass migration of primarily African Americans from the South to the North, particularly in New York and Chicago. These Northern areas were viewed by many as places to which their families could move, to get higher paid jobs and improve their quality of life. Although almost a hundred years on and the questionable success of the mass migration due to housing and discriminatory issues, the migrants appear to have judged the financial situation correctly, as the North, on the whole, has maintained it's status as the wealthier hemisphere of the USA.

Level with New York continues the Northerly trend of wealth, stretching as far as Wyoming in the West. While there are some less wealthy areas in between Indiana and Wyoming, most likely due to the physical geography of the land (the Prairies), the North remains far more prosperous than the South when it comes to household income.

Sources:

http://www.caliper.com/Maptitude/International/unitedstates.htm