IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v111y2021p520-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trends in US Spatial Inequality: Concentrating Affluence and a Democratization of Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Cecile Gaubert
  • Patrick Kline
  • Damián Vergara
  • Danny Yagan

Abstract

We use Bureau of Economic Analysis, census, and Current Population Survey data to study trends in income inequality across US states and counties from 1960–2019. Both states and counties have diverged in terms of per capita pretax incomes since the late 1990s, with transfers serving to dampen this divergence. County incomes have been diverging since the late 1970s. These trends in mean income mask opposing patterns among top- and bottom-income quantiles. Top incomes have diverged markedly across states since the late 1970s. In contrast, bottom-income quantiles and poverty rates have converged across areas in recent decades.

Suggested Citation

  • Cecile Gaubert & Patrick Kline & Damián Vergara & Danny Yagan, 2021. "Trends in US Spatial Inequality: Concentrating Affluence and a Democratization of Poverty," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 520-525, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:520-25
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211075
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E130741V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211075.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211075.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20211075?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Berbée, Paul & Braun, Sebastian T. & Franke, Richard, 2022. "Reversing Fortunes of German Regions, 1926-2019: Boon and Bane of Early Industrialization?," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264032, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Anne Beck & Sebastian Doerr, 2023. "The financial origins of regional inequality," BIS Working Papers 1151, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Cameron LAPOINT & SAKABE Shogo, 2021. "Place-Based Policies and the Geography of Corporate Investment," Discussion papers 21059, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    4. Luisa Corrado & Daniela Fantozzi & Simona Giglioli, 2022. "Real-time ineuqalities and policies during the pandemic in the US," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1396, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    5. Luis Bauluz & Paweł Bukowski & Mark Fransham & Annie Lee & Margarita López Forero & Filip Novokmet & Sébastien Breau & Neil Lee & Clément Malgouyres & Moritz Schularick & Verdugo Gregory, 2023. "Spatial wage inequality in North America and Western Europe: changes between and within local labour markets 1975-2019," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-04423262, HAL.
    6. Dylan Shane Connor & Tom Kemeny & Michael Storper, 2024. "Frontier workers and the seedbeds of inequality and prosperity," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 393-414.
    7. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    8. Benjamin K. Couillard & Christopher L. Foote & Kavish Gandhi & Ellen Meara & Jonathan Skinner, 2021. "Rising Geographic Disparities in US Mortality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 123-146, Fall.
    9. Bastian, Jacob E. & Black, Dan A., 2024. "Relaxing financial constraints with tax credits and migrating out of rural and distressed America," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    10. Tom Kemeny & Michael Storper, 2024. "The Changing Shape of Spatial Income Disparities in the United States," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 100(1), pages 1-30, January.
    11. Hu, Xiao & Liang, Che-Yuan, 2022. "Does income redistribution prevent residential segregation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 519-542.
    12. Katheryn N. Russ & Jay C. Shambaugh & Sanjay R. Singh, 2024. "Currency Areas, Labor Markets, and Regional Cyclical Sensitivity," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(1), pages 152-195, March.
    13. Andrew W. Nutting, 2023. "Geographic earnings inequality by race, 1960–2016," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 290-339, March.
    14. Kindsgrab, Paul M., 2022. "Do higher income taxes on top earners trickle down? A local labor markets approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    15. Tom Kemeny & Sergio Petralia & Michael Storper, 2022. "Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2211, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Jul 2022.
    16. Christian Awuku-Budu & Dirk van Duym, 2022. "Developing Statistics on the Distribution of State Personal Income: Methodology and Preliminary Results," BEA Working Papers 0197, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    17. Petralia, Sergio & Kemeny, Thomas & Storper, Michael, 2023. "The transformative effects of tacit technological knowledge," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120154, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Kemeny, Tom & Storper, Michael, 2022. "The changing shape of spatial inequality in the United States," SocArXiv wnd8t, Center for Open Science.
    19. Agrawal David R. & Foremny Dirk, 2022. "Redistribution In A Globalized World," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 242(5-6), pages 551-567, December.
    20. Maximiliano Dvorkin & Brian Greaney, 2024. "The geography of wealth: shocks, mobility, and precautionary savings," Working Papers 2024-033, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 30 Sep 2024.
    21. Lang, Valentin, 2024. "The distributional effects of place-based policies in the EU," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-039, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    22. Kim, Min Kyong & Bhattacharya, Jayanta & Bhattacharya, Joydeep, 2024. "Is income inequality linked to infectious disease prevalence? A hypothesis-generating study using tuberculosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 345(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:520-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.