TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Resseger,Matthew G.
AU  - Tobio,Kristina
TI  - Urban Inequality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14419
PY  - 2008
Y2  - October 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14419
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14419.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Matthew G. Resseger
Harvard University
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-Mail: resseger@fas.harvard.edu

Kristina Tobio
Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK St- T347
Cambridge, MA  02138
E-Mail: kristina_tobio@ksg.harvard.edu
AB  - What impact does inequality have on metropolitan areas?  Crime rates are higher in places with more inequality, and people in unequal cities are more likely to say that they are unhappy.  There is also a negative association between local inequality and the growth of both income and population, once we control for the initial distribution of skills.  What determines the degree of inequality across metropolitan areas?  Twenty years ago, metropolitan inequality was strongly associated with poverty, but today, inequality is more strongly linked to the presence of the wealthy.  Inequality in skills can explain about one third of the variation in income inequality, and that skill inequality is itself explained by historical schooling patterns and immigration.  There are also substantial differences in the returns to skill, related to local concentrations in different industries, and these too are strongly correlated with inequality.
ER  -