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[[underlined]] The Washington-Baltimore Area

General Economic Aspects. [[/underlined]] The economic status of Washington and Baltimore is well known in a general way, and for the purpose of this proceeding it is appropriate to consider them and their metropolitan areas as a single metropolitan unit. A brief resume of the generally accepted indexes of economic activity showing the relative standing among other major metropolitan areas is sufficient at this point. 
In the basic measure, population, the area ranks fifth with 4,270,000, behind New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, and followed by Detroit and Boston. In complications showing the rate of growth in population, the area occupies second place with respect to the 1950-1960 decade with a rate of 23.5 percent, preceded by Los Angeles which had a rate of 54.4 percent. In a more recent five-year period, 1960-1965, it occupies first place with a rate of 14.9 percent followed by Los Angeles at 12.2 percent and San Francisco at 10.8 percent. In indexes which attempt to test the quality of the population statistics, Baltimore-Washington ranks at the top, examples being with respect to the amount of effective buying income per household and the percentage of households with income exceeding $10,000. In both of these the area ranks first, with the average of total dollar income per household at $10,186, closely followed by Chicago at $10,082 and Detroit at $9,830. In the proportion of $10,000-plus incomes, it ranks first at 33 percent, followed closely by Detroit, New York, Boston, and San Francisco.