So close yet so unequal: Neighborhood inequality in American cities

Francesco Andreoli (francesco.andreoli@liser.lu) and Eugenio Peluso

No 477, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on neighborhood inequality along both theoretical and empirical lines. We introduce a new neighborhood inequality index (NI) to measure income inequality within individual neighborhoods of varying sizes, and study its normative and statistical properties. The NI index is used in combination with a large database of income distributions defined on a fine-grained geographic scale to study neighborhood inequality in American cities over the last 35 years. Inequality within small individual neighborhoods is found to grow steadily over the period, albeit heterogeneously across cities. We investigate the intergenerational consequences of a rising NI index, exploiting labor market responses to minimum wage regulation as a source of identification. We find that lower neighborhood inequality during childhood makes income mobility for children with a disadvantaged parental background more likely.

Keywords: income inequality; individual neighborhood; geostatistics; census; ACS; intergenerational mobility; divided city; mixed city. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D31 D63 I14 J62 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70 pages
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2018-477

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