City rankings

Highest Income Cities in Delaware

Hockessin ranks #1 in Delaware for highest income cities at $171,204.

This ranking orders all 11 qualifying Delaware cities by median household income, computed from the named federal field or time-series described below. It is one of 9 transparent ranking lenses Areazine publishes for Delaware, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare Hockessin's standing against every other Delaware city ranked below.

11
Cities ranked
$171,204
#1 Hockessin
$58,671
Lowest, Wilmington
$78,328
Median

What this Delaware ranking shows

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.

Hockessin leads 11 Delaware cities at $171,204, while Wilmington sits at the bottom with $58,671 - a total spread of $112,533 on median household income. The top 5 occupy 71% of that range, indicating a wide separation between leaders and the rest of the field.

The median Delaware city in this list sits at $78,328, $92,876 behind Hockessin. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Delaware rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.

Top 5 - Highest Income Cities

# City median household incomePopulation
1 Hockessin $171,204 14K
2 Glasgow $113,982 14K
3 Middletown $112,831 20K
4 Pike Creek Valley $102,434 11K
5 Bear $91,687 19K

The bar to make this list

What it takes to rank in Delaware's highest income cities

Wilmington, the #11 entry, is the cutoff, among every Delaware city with a qualifying value

$58,671 Bottom 1% higher than 0% of 11 Delaware cities

#11 cutoff $58,671 $171,204 every qualifying Delaware city, bucketed by value

Each bar is a $11,253-wide band; taller bars hold more Delaware cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.

Source U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey / CDC PLACES · 2024 ACS 5-year

Does median household income track with city size?

Hockessin leads Delaware on highest income cities, but ranks #8 of 11 plotted cities by population - population size alone does not explain the top spot.

Highest Income Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), median household income per methodology 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 11 entities by Population (X) and median household income (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. Large & strongSmall & strongLarge & weakSmall & weak 020,00040,00060,00080,000 50,000100,000150,000200,000 Population median household income Hockessin - Population: 13527, median household income: 171204HockessinGlasgow - Population: 14303, median household income: 113982GlasgowMiddletown - Population: 20372, median household income: 112831MiddletownPike Creek Valley - Population: 11217, median household income: 102434Pike Creek ValleyBear - Population: 19371, median household income: 91687BearBrookside - Population: 14353, median household income: 78328BrooksideNewark - Population: 33817, median household income: 76912NewarkSmyrna - Population: 11319, median household income: 67048SmyrnaDover - Population: 39403, median household income: 60199DoverMilford - Population: 10252, median household income: 59464MilfordWilmington - Population: 70898, median household income: 58671Wilmington
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), median household income per methodology
Read every plotted city's value (text table)
  • Hockessin: 14K population, $171,204 median household income
  • Glasgow: 14K population, $113,982 median household income
  • Middletown: 20K population, $112,831 median household income
  • Pike Creek Valley: 11K population, $102,434 median household income
  • Bear: 19K population, $91,687 median household income
  • Brookside: 14K population, $78,328 median household income
  • Newark: 34K population, $76,912 median household income
  • Smyrna: 11K population, $67,048 median household income
  • Dover: 39K population, $60,199 median household income
  • Milford: 10K population, $59,464 median household income
  • Wilmington: 71K population, $58,671 median household income

Highest Income Cities 11

Exact table for this ranking: Download Highest Income Cities table (CSV). Fleet city profiles also available at areazine-city-profiles.csv.

More Delaware Rankings 8

Reading this Delaware ranking responsibly

Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in Delaware; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Delaware that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.

Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings, for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty, is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine Delaware rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.

Data Sources

Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2024 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).