Who are We

By Bobbi Bowman, The McLean Ear

MCLEAN, VA – McLean is richer, older, much better educated, and whiter than Fairfax County.

We are a community of nearly 40,000 folks in a county of 1 million plus. Fairfax is growing but not McLean. In fact, we've lost an estimated  500 folks since 2000, according to the U.S. Census.

How rich? Per capita income in McLean: $87,668. Fairfax $49,990. Virginia: $32,224. McLean families have a median income of $186,078. That means half the families make more than that and half make less. Fairfax median family  income: $127,085.

In 2008, CNN Money listed McLean 8th in a list of places with the highest median incomes. We were not as rich as Potomac, our neighbor in Maryland, which was 7th on the list. Towns in Connecticut and California dominated the CNN list.

How old? 16.2  percent of us are senior citizens — that is 65 years or older. (That means we look like Florida, 17 percent)  That's double the number for Fairfax.  The median age for McLean is 45. For Fairfax: 38 years.

How educated?: 80 percent of folks in McLean have a college degree. Fairfax: 58.4 percent. But Fairfax is the second most educated county in Virginia. Arlington tops the list because 68 percent of its residents hold a college degree.

How white? 80 percent of our neighbors  are white not Hispanic. Fairfax: 60 percent.  The largest minority group in both McLean and Fairfax are Asians at 14.5 percent nearly the same as the county. More Latinos live in McLean than Black folks. Latinos are 6 percent while Blacks are 1.4 percent. In Fairfax County: Latinos, 13.3 percent. Blacks  9. 3 percent.

The tots  five and under are slightly more diverse —- a universal trend across the U.S.

More than  50 percent of  the Fairfax public school kids are minorities. They  will be our future workers and taxpayers which means they will pay our Social Security.  Increasingly  McLean doesn't look like the rest of Fairfax because of the historic demographic changes that have occurred in the past 30 years.