America’s Worsening Geographic Inequality

Richard Florida:

The economic gap between have and have-not places continues to widen.

It’s not just economic inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—that is growing ever wider. Geographic inequality, the divide between rich and poor places, is too.

America’s growing geographic or spatial inequality is documented in great detail in recent studies from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) and The Hamilton Project of Brookings Institution.

The EIG report, released earlier this week, uses data on income, jobs, business dynamism, educational attainment, unemployment, vacant housing, and poverty, to track the performance of thousands of zip codes across America over two periods, 2007 to 2011 (defined by the study as the recession) and 2012 to 2016 (recovery). They combine these key measures into a Distressed Communities Index (DCI).