Economy
The U.S. Cities Where the Rich Are Most Segregated From Everyone Else
Wealthy Americans live more separate lives in Southern and Midwestern metros like Memphis and Detroit.
This is the third post in a five-part series on economic segregation in U.S. metros.
The richest Americans—the much-talked about 1 percent—are a cloistered class. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz scathingly put it, they “have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel has similarly lamented the “skyboxification” of American life, in which “people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives.”