distance to legend text ggplot

Question

I am trying to get a little more distance between the legend box (indicator) and the legend text. I have a code adapted from this amazing page. Here is my MWE:

library(openxlsx)           # for reading in Excel data
library(dplyr)          # for data manipulation
library(tidyr)          # for data manipulation
library(magrittr)       # for easier syntax in one or two areas
library(gridExtra)      # for generating some comparison plots
library(ggplot2)        # for generating the visualizations

mwedata <- data.frame(Metro=c(rep("Dayton,OH",6)))
mwedata$class <- as.character(c("Lower","Middle","Upper","Lower","Middle","Upper"))
mwedata$year <- as.numeric(c(rep(2000,3),rep(2014,3)))
mwedata$value <- as.numeric(c(0.221,0.580,0.199,0.269,0.527,0.204))
mwedata <- mwedata %>%
  mutate(y_label = paste0(round(value*100, 1), "%")) 


plot <- ggplot(mwedata, aes(x = class, y = value, fill = factor(year))) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("#29ABE2", "#217693")) +
  geom_text(aes(label = y_label), position = position_dodge(0.9),
            vjust = 1.5, color = "white", family = "Georgia")

plot <- plot +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::percent) +
  scale_x_discrete(labels = c("Lower" = "Lower Class",
                              "Middle" = "Middle Class", "Upper" = "Upper Class")) +
  labs(title = "Distribution of Adults by Income in Dayton, OH",
       subtitle = "The percentage of adults in the middle class eroded by 5.3% from 2000 to 2014. Although a small \nfraction of these individuals moved into the upper class (+0.5%), the majority of these middle class \nindividuals moved into the lower income class (+4.8%).",
       caption = "Source: Pew Research Center analysis of the \n2000 decennial census and 2014 American \nCommunity Survey (IPUMS)")

plot +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.title = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major.x = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
        legend.position = c(1,1), legend.justification = c(1,1),
        legend.background = element_blank(),
        legend.direction="vertical",
        text = element_text(family = "Georgia"),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 18, margin = margin(b = 10)),
        plot.subtitle = element_text(size = 10, color = "darkslategrey", margin = margin(b = 25)),
        plot.caption = element_text(size = 8, margin = margin(t = 10), color = "grey70", hjust = 0),
        legend.title = element_blank(),
        legend.text.align = 2)

The last line of code legend.text.align is supposed to move the text from the legend coloured boxes, but it only seem to apply for the lower of the two. See the image below. Can anyone help me?

EDIT 1:

I totally forgot to include the defined data.frame. I have now updated the MWE so it really is an WE with this line of code

mwedata <- data.frame(Metro=c(rep("Dayton,OH",6)))

Im sorry for the confusion..

Answer 1

This helps resolve the issue:

1. Remove legend.title = element_blank() and legend.text.align = 2 from theme()
2. Add fill = "" to labs()

Curious observation while debugging: using your original code, just changing the font family, e.g. from "Georgia" to "Open Sans", removes the discrepancy in alignment between the two labels in the legend.

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