Justice
The Inequality of American Cities
Mapping inequality across U.S. metros.
Inequality is shaping up to be one of the biggest issues in the 2012 presidential election. The Occupy movement may have waned since last fall, but its focus on the privileges of the top one percent has yet to go away.
Most economists argue that rising inequality is driven by broader structural changes in the economy. Globalization has shifted manufacturing jobs to lower wage countries like China; new technologies and increases in productivity have eliminated millions of the low-skill but high-paying jobs that were left.