New Jersey has the fifth-highest median income in the country, but property tax rates vary widely in the state's 566 municipalities. The disparities arise from the fact that New Jersey relies heavily on property taxes to pay for local government.
Because cities and older suburbs have more lower-income and elderly residents who need more government services, and because those communities have lost more of their tax base as wealthier homeowners have left for newer suburbs, lower-income residents often are stuck with the bill.
The Gannett study found a family earning $40,000 would pay 14 percent of its income to property taxes, while a family earning $126,000 would pay seven percent.
"Spending needs are often greatest where resources are least," Henry A. Coleman, a professor at Rutgers University's Edward J.
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, told Gannett.
Because income and race are closely linked, Gannett found that the more minorities in a municipality, the greater the likelihood that property taxes will take a bigger chunk of income.
The gap between rich and poor is most evident in northern New Jersey. A 2005 study by the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan found that the New York-northeastern New Jersey area is the most economically segregated of the country's 25 largest metropolitan centers.
New Jerseyans also don't fare well compared to the rest of the nation in the amount they spend on non-mortgage housing expenses, which include utilities and maintenance as well as taxes.
According to the U.S. Census, residents of Passaic and Hudson counties in northern New Jersey who own their homes and don't pay a mortgage spend 21 cents of every dollar they earn on housing costs - the highest rate of the nation's 1,882 counties. Ocean County is fifth at 20 cents per dollar.
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