Income Inequality

Posted on February 20, 2014 by admin

• Study finds greater income inequality in nation’s thriving cities, By Annie Lowrey, February 20, 2014, New York Times: “If you want to live in a more equal community, it might mean living in a more moribund economy. That is one of the implications of a new study of local income trends by the Brookings Institution, the Washington research group. It found that inequality is sharply higher in economically vibrant cities like New York and San Francisco than in less dynamic ones like Columbus, Ohio, and Wichita, Kan. The study, released on Thursday, comes as a number of cities across the country are trying to tackle income inequality and expand opportunity through measures like increasing the minimum wage, which President Obama has promised to do at the federal level. In no city is the effort more prominent than in New York, where the new mayor, Bill de Blasio, has promised higher taxes for rich families and better services for poor ones, including expanded early-childhood education and affordable-housing developments…”
• Income inequality grew rapidly in Milwaukee, study finds, By John Schmid, February 20, 2014, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Milwaukee was singled out as one of the 50 biggest U.S. cities where income inequality widened most rapidly during the last recession and its aftermath, according to a new study released Thursday. In a ranking that compares the change in income levels from 2007 to 2012, Milwaukee came in at No. 6 of the 50 biggest cities, according to the study from the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C…”
• Income Inequality exists in all 50 states, and appears on the rise in Ohio, report says, By Olivera Perkins, February 19, 2014, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “A new report on income inequality adds a more recent occurrence to a familiar adage: The rich keep getting richer. The poor keep getting poorer, and the middle class keeps losing ground. Ohioans in top one percent of incomes saw their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by 70 percent between 1979 and 2011, says a report released Wednesday by the Economic Analysis and Research Network, or EARN. The other 99 percent saw their incomes fall by 7.7 percent during the same period, according to the analysis of Internal Revenue Service data at the national and state level…”