New York, New York; if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Of course, to make it in New York, you probably need a college education, and possibly more than that; that’s about the only way you’re going to be able to get a job that pays well enough to be able to live comfortably in the city. The nation’s most-educated congressional district is New York’s 12th Congressional District, which covers some of the most expensive parts of the city: the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as well as Midtown and the East Village. It also reaches across the East River into Brooklyn and Queens, but only to pick up some rapidly gentrifying areas like Greenpoint and Long Island City. It’s not just New York City’s most affluent district but also its whitest: at 65 percent non-Hispanic white, it just edges out both lower Manhattan’s 10th district and Staten Island’s 11th district.
There’s a variety of ways to ask the “most-educated” question, but if you look at the percentage of residents 25 years or older who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, the 12th is tops in the nation, at 71.8 percent of the population. (If you look at percentage of residents 25 or older with a high school diploma or better, the 12th falls to second place; it slots in behind Colorado’s 2nd district, which is the college town of Boulder, plus some of Denver’s affluent suburbs.)
The 12th also tops a number of other “Most District” categories, some of which are interrelated. It has the highest per capita income of any district ($78,605) … though, interestingly, it doesn’t have the highest median household income. That distinction goes to Virginia’s 10th district, a suburban district with considerably more two-income households (you can see that household size is the key factor distinguishing the two main ways of looking at affluence, per capita income vs. median household income).
And although Wall Street isn’t located in this district, it’s only a subway ride away, and the 12th has the highest percentage of FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) workers of any district: 18.9 percent of workers. Finally, it’s not a district with a lot of children (it has the highest percentage of persons over 18: 87.6 percent), but is a district with a lot of unmarried millennials (the highest percentage of persons 25-34: 28.1 percent).
What’s currently the 12th has always traditionally been known as New York’s “Silk Stocking” district, given its wealth, and held onto its Rockefeller Republican ways for a long time; you may be surprised to find out that the area's previous representative before current Rep. Carolyn Maloney was, in fact, a Republican! Maloney first took office in 1992, beating Republican incumbent Bill Green. Green was, unsurprisingly, one of the House’s most liberal Republicans, and even then, it was a strongly Democratic district at the presidential level. In 2012, the 12th went for Barack Obama by a 77 to 22 margin, while Obama won 80 to 19 in 2008.
Maloney, who’s a member of the Progressive Caucus, has been a reliable liberal vote for many years, and at age 69, will probably still be serving here for a while longer. She has been re-elected easily over the years, with her most noteworthy primary challenge in recent years, in 2010 against Wall Streeter Reshma Saujani, turning into an 81-19 rout.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.