Geography and Inequality

At The Orange County Register, Joel Kotkin writes about the topic with which we shall conclude the course:

Inequality is on the rise throughout the country, while there are significant differences in its depth by geography and region. California is producing ever more billionaires, three times as many as in regularly faster-growing Texas, but the middle class is in secular decline, according to a recent Public Policy Institute Study, and now constitutes less than half California's population. The state also suffers the highest rate of poverty in the country and is now home to roughly one-third of the nation's welfare recipients, equal to almost three times its proportion of the nation's population.

Longtime Seattle demographer Richard Morrill tried to map out the emerging geography of inequality by regions and metropolitan areas. His conclusions are both complex and compelling.

The places that did best in terms of income equality tended to be in the northern Plains, parts of the upper Midwest and northern New England. Much of the greatest inequality was found in the nation's megastates – California, New York, Florida and, yes, Texas. At the metropolitan level, generally the worst income gaps were found in some of our biggest metros, such as first New York, followed by Miami, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco, as well as New Orleans.