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Orange County's richest enclave, Newport Coast, checks in at a median household income of $143,781.
That's more than three times the national average, according to La Jolla-based ESRI Business Information Solutions. The Newport Beach neighborhood is one of 11 OC ZIP codes with household income above $100,000.
For all its wealth, though, OC isn't as rich as several other moneyed places across the country, many of them much smaller in size. Those range from the exclusive 200-home Jupiter Island in Florida to suburban hide-aways outside Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle.
OC's stiffest regional competition comes from the Bay area, where a mixture of old San Francisco gentry, newly rich technology executives, celebrities and others have created flush enclaves on the fringes of Silicon Valley.
"The tech sector boom went to unreal heights in Silicon Valley," said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. "There's still a lot of residual wealth there from people who got out early enough."
A big chunk of Bay area wealth lies in Atherton in San Mateo County, where corporate executives and celebrities drive the median household income to $234,792, the highest of any residential ZIP code in the country, according to ESRI.
Once the summer home domain of wealthy...