Study Finds Greater Income Inequality in Nation’s Thriving Cities
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/business/economy/study-finds-greater-income-inequality-in-nations-thriving-cities.html
The single biggest increase in inequality over that period occurred in San Francisco, where earnings for the typical low-income household dropped $4,000 and soared $28,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a high-income household. But in most other places, inequality intensified because the poor got poorer, including in Cleveland, Sacramento, Tucson and Fresno, Calif.
“High-income households did not lose much ground during the recession,” Mr. Berube of Brookings said. “Low-income households lost ground and haven’t gained it back. And the pressures around cost of living are higher at the low end than they are at the high end.”
Researchers say local inequality trends are related to national inequality trends, but are not the same. Any individual city’s earnings ratios might be more defined by who can afford to and wants to live there — whether a family of relatively low-skilled new immigrants, or a computer programmer in high demand or a financier from abroad — than by tidal economic trends like unionization and technological change.