The Spatial Distribution of Income in the United States

• In Event: 1483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 16. Income Inequality, Market Insecurity, and Risk

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, income inequality in the United States has skyrocketed. Studies have shown that this has occurred at multiple geographic levels, including the level of the county, census tract, and the country. However, relatively little research examines how much of the rise in inequality at the national level is due to increases in inequality within geographic subunits and how much of this upward trend comes from growing inequality between subunits. This paper attempts to accomplish this. I compare inequality trends along multiple dimensions, breaking national inequality into between and within state changes, and disaggregating county-level trends into between and within-tract changes. The final results indicate that the spatial distribution of income has become increasingly uneven at the same time that income inequality has risen. This has important implications for how inequality trends are experienced in the everyday lives of U.S. citizens. While inequality is rising at the national level, the contemporaneous rise of income segregation may mask the effects of these trends on people's daily experience.

Author

• Andrew Carr, Duke University