The Most Economically Unequal Cities in America

Income inequality is one of those topics where everybody has a gut feeling and almost nobody agrees on the number. The Census Bureau actually has a number, and it has been measuring it the same way for a long time. It's called the Gini index, and once you understand what it does and does not capture, you can read these city rankings without getting fooled.

So let's start there, and then walk through the large American cities where the gap between the top and the bottom is widest.

What the Gini index actually measures

The Gini index is a single number between 0 and 1 that describes how evenly household income is spread across a place. At 0, every household earns exactly the same amount. At 1, one household has all the income and everyone else has nothing. Neither extreme exists in the real world, so what you really care about is where a city falls on that scale relative to everywhere else.

The United States as a whole sits at 0.476. That's the national benchmark I keep coming back to in this piece. When a city reads well above 0.476, income there is spread more unevenly than the country at large. When it reads below, more evenly.

Here's the honest part. A Gini index tells you about the shape of the income distribution, not the size of it. A poor town where almost everyone earns a little can post a low Gini and still be a hard place to live. A wealthy city with a very rich top and a very poor bottom can post a high Gini even though plenty of people there are comfortable. The number measures the spread, not the floor. Keep that in mind as the city list gets going.

Why this piece sticks to large cities

If you sort every place in the country by Gini index with no size limit, the top of the list looks strange. The single most unequal city in America is Darlington, South Carolina, at 0.71. Resort towns climb high too. Aspen, Colorado, sits at 0.64, because a small population of very high earners shares a ZIP code with the people who work the lifts, the kitchens, and the front desks.

Small towns swing hard on the Gini index for a simple reason. With few households, a handful of very rich or very poor families moves the whole number. The measurement is real, but it's volatile, and it doesn't tell you much about how most Americans live. That's why the rest of this is about cities over 250,000 people, where the number is steadier and the pattern is more telling.

The most unequal large cities

Two cities tie at the top. Atlanta, Georgia and Miami, Florida both post a Gini index of 0.56. That's a big gap above the national 0.476, and the two cities get there by similar routes. Both have a fast-growing high end (finance, real estate, and in Miami's case a wave of wealth moving in) sitting on top of a large population that never caught that wave.

Right behind them, at 0.55, come New Orleans, Louisiana and New York, New York. New York is the cleanest example of the whole pattern. It holds some of the highest concentrations of wealth on the planet and, in the same five boroughs, a very large low-income population. The booming top and the struggling bottom share the subway. That mix is exactly what pushes a Gini index up.

At 0.54 there's a cluster: Cincinnati, Ohio, Tampa, Florida, and Houston, Texas. Houston is interesting because it's often described as affordable and opportunity-rich, and both things can be true while inequality runs high. Energy money and a broad professional class sit above a big service economy, and the spread is wide.

Then a band at 0.53: Boston, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, California, and Dallas, Texas. Boston's tech, biotech, and university wealth pairs with a large working population in a very expensive metro. Los Angeles runs entertainment and trade money alongside one of the country's largest low-income populations.

Chicago, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee round out the group at 0.52. Memphis is worth a word, because it shows the other face of a high Gini index. Some cities are unequal mostly because the top is so high. Others are unequal because the bottom is so deep and persistent. The single number doesn't tell you which, and that distinction matters when you think about what a place actually needs.

The pattern underneath the numbers

Look at that list again and the common thread is obvious. These are big cities that hold concentrated wealth and concentrated poverty at the same time. A high-end economy is booming in one part of town while a large low-income population lives in another, and the city's single Gini index averages the two into one wide spread.

This is also why big, prosperous cities can score higher than poorer ones. Inequality isn't the same thing as poverty. A city can grow richer at the top and watch its Gini index climb even as the bottom holds steady. A struggling town with little wealth at the top can post a lower number while being a tougher place to earn a living. The 0.476 national figure and the 0.56 at the top of this list both deserve honest discussion, and neither one, on its own, tells you whether people are doing well.

The useful move is to pair the Gini index with the income numbers behind it. A high spread driven by a soaring top reads very differently from a high spread driven by a sinking bottom, and once you look at both, the city stops being a single statistic.

If you want to see the full ordering and where your own city lands, the most unequal incomes ranking lays it out, and you can put two places side by side on the compare page to see whether a high Gini index is coming from the top, the bottom, or both. That's the question the single number can't answer for you.

Sources

Gini index of household income inequality from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. City figures and full ordering on the most unequal incomes ranking.