Justice
The High Inequality of U.S. Metro Areas Compared to Countries
Some American cities have rates similar to the world's poorest nations.
Income inequality in America has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age. As Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, noted in June, “America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries — and its gap with the rest has been widening.”
This already-high national level of inequality is even worse in certain American cities and metro regions. This is not surprising, given the large-scale demographic and economic sorting of Americans by education and skill over the past couple of decades. But it’s still shocking to realize that some American cities and metros face levels of inequality comparable to those in the poorest nations of Africa and other less-developed parts of the world.