Economic Segregation and Inequality in Europe's Cities

Americans are well aware of the growing economic inequality playing out in major U.S. cities. So you can forgive them for assuming that things are always much better in European cities, with their larger welfare states and long histories of social democracy. Indeed, my own recent study of the connection between inequality and creativity juxtaposed America’s low-road path—which combines high levels of creativity with high levels of inequality—with the high-road path of Scandinavian and Northern European nations, where high levels of creative competitiveness go along with much lower levels of inequality.

But a new study of 13 leading European cities—London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Vienna, Madrid, Milan, Athens, Budapest, Prague, Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn—documents a substantial rise in socioeconomic inequality and economic segregation over the past decade or so. The study (part of a broader project on Socio-Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities) tracks socioeconomic inequality and segregation by key markets of socioeconomic class—including income, occupational status, and education—in these cities from 2001 to 2011.