City rankings
Highest Income Cities in Georgia
Milton ranks #1 in Georgia for highest income cities at $171,295.
This ranking orders all 50 qualifying Georgia 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 Georgia, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare Milton's standing against every other Georgia city ranked below.
Data updated 2026-08-21
- 50
- Cities ranked
- $171,295
- #1 Milton
- $75,266
- Lowest, Norcross
What this Georgia 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.
Milton leads 50 Georgia cities at $171,295, while Norcross sits at the bottom with $75,266 - a total spread of $96,029 on median household income. The top 5 occupy 43% of that range, indicating a moderate distribution with meaningful steps between rungs.
The median Georgia city in this list sits at $91,766, $79,529 behind Milton. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Georgia rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.
Top 5 - Highest Income Cities
| Rank | City | median household income | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Milton | $171,295 | 38K |
| #2 | Johns Creek | $160,093 | 83K |
| #3 | Alpharetta | $147,612 | 64K |
| #4 | Decatur | $139,397 | 22K |
| #5 | Druid Hills | $130,139 | 15K |
Does median household income track with city size?
Highest Income Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities
Highest Income Cities 50
More Georgia Rankings 8
Reading this Georgia 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 Georgia; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Georgia 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 Georgia 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).
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.