This Is the Thing That Will Destroy Our Cities

Cities are engines of innovation and wealth creation for a healthy society -- but not when the vast majority of wealth accrues to people who already have it. Today we discuss the Gini coefficient, the different ways income inequality affects US cities, and which cities are most and least affected.
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- Most recent livestream if you're really THAT curious about the Fairbanks, Alaska pothole hotline joke: kzbin.info...
- Location Efficiency (Worst): • 10 Cities Where Housin...
- Location Efficiency (Best): • Where People Spend the...
- CityVisit St. Petersburg FL: • Building an Urban Gem ...
- CityVisit Miami: • Miami: Ultra-Livable P...
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Resources:
- Use this Census tool to look up the Gini Index for your own geography! data.census.go...
- en.wikipedia.o...
- data.census.go...)
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Images
- January 6 protest, Reuters
- Hurrican Katrina, Reuters
- Corrado Gini By no coneguts - Bookofproofs: www.bookofproo..., CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- World income inequality map By Allice Hunter - Empty map: File:World map (Miller cylindrical projection, blank without Antarctica).svgWorld Bank Gini Index Estimate: Gini index (World Bank estimate). data.worldbank.org. Retrieved on 2022-04-23.New Zealand (2019): Household income and housing-cost statistics: Year ended June 2019 (XLSX). Statistics New Zealand. Archived from the original on 24 February 2020. Retrieved on 24 February 2020.Oman (2018): Urban - Gini index - Omani - Total. The National Centre for Statistics and Information, Sultanate of Oman. Retrieved on 2018-05-20.Taiwan (2017): Percentage share of disposable income by quintile groups of income recipients and measures of income distribution. stat.gov.tw. Archived from the original on 2022-07-14. Retrieved on 26 June 2019.Singapore (2017): Distribution of Family Income - GINI Index. Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on 30 November 2018. Retrieved on 25 January 2019.Greenland (2015): Gini Index coefficient. CIA World Factbook. Retrieved on 16 July 2021.Saudi Arabia (2013): The World Factbook. CIA.gov. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved on 28 May 2019.Cambodia (2013): Income Gini coefficient. hdr.undp.org. World Bank. Archived from the original on 10 June 2010. Retrieved on 29 January 2020.Guyana (2007): Gini Index coefficient. CIA World Factbook. Retrieved on 4 August 2021.Cuba (2000): "Cuba grapples with growing inequality". Reuters., CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- New Orleans French Quarter By No machine-readable author provided. PRA assumed (based on copyright claims). - No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Beignets - This image was originally posted to Flickr by Paul Lowry at flickr.com/pho.... It was reviewed on 24 January 2021 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
- Whole Foods By M.O. Stevens - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
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[@CityNerd]

Did you know this video has been available on Nebula since Saturday? Four days early! Next week's video is scheduled to hit Nebula on Friday (two days from now). Better yet, it's ad-free and promo-free on Nebula, and best of all -- NO COMMENT SECTION. Use my custom link for 40% off an annual subscription -- it really REALLY helps the channel! go.nebula.tv/citynerd And yeah, lifetime is still available, too! go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=citynerd

[@tatianatub]

the lack of comment section is the one thing keeping me from using nebula

[@mayam9575]

Was this pre or post taxed gini coefficient? A lot of the places mentioned have various degrees of taxes and social services. A high gini coefficient in NYC is less alarming to me than in Birmingham because the top tax rate is around 50% and NYC and much less in Birmingham. NYC also has relatively cheap public transit and a programs that guarantee a bed for all homeless people. A strong progressive tax rate can be a good way to combat high levels of inequality.

[@khunopie9159]

It REALLY helps my bank account!

[@gordonv.cormack3216]

@@mayam9575 The site has both. After tax is lower than before tax. I don't recall which this summary is.

[@angelgarza7437]

​@@tatianatub same here

[@norlockv]

Your love for integral calculus is apparent.

[@IamNiggler]

I'm a homosexual man as well 😊

[@QemeH]

@@IamNiggler Math is gay now? Lord help this country...

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

@@QemeH always has been...

[@sazanadora565]

@@QemeH Math is WOKE??!

[@alquinn8576]

@@sazanadora565using the number "0" is cultural appropriation

[@adamhall5332]

No way! I am from Fairbanks! And I’m now a loyal city nerd viewer! Never thought I’d see my hometown on any of your lists because it’s not urban or walkable at all. 😂

[@flyingskier1913]

we also got a mention in the most climate resilient cities video. It's not walkable but the bike paths are separated and there's no more demand to induce on the roads!

[@adamhall5332]

@@flyingskier1913 good point! You just need the fat tires, and the thickest gloves! 🥶

[@flyingskier1913]

@@adamhall5332 with pogies and a fatbike, anything is possible

[@alquinn8576]

Fairbanks is probably too small to make most of his cutoffs for pop size

[@christiananderson3192]

And even better you now know the number you need to call to report a pothole

[@ThreeRunHomer]

DC explanation: government workers and government contractors make good salaries but not astronomical salaries. So there are a huge number of middle income people in the DC area, outweighing the number of poor people that are there too.

[@charleskummerer]

And low income black people have been pushed out for the last 4 decades

[@philalethistry7937]

Wasn't it in the news that the minimum wage for federal workers was *only just* raised to $15 an hour? I recall a story about a cafeteria worker who had to live out of her car.

[@drewski-qu3co]

that is why Baltimore exists

[@davidbodner5076]

Yeah, but he picked Gini numbers for metropolitan regions, not municipalities. So, the previously urban, still-poor should still be counted.@@charleskummerer

[@stephenlight647]

National Taxes are transferred to DC and suburbs, creating the usual Imperial City, seen since the advent of Civilization over 5,000 years ago. There is nothing new in this. When the Empire crumbles, the Imperial City will fade away.

[@NoahTheJew17]

As a DC resident, I know that a lot of young white collar professionals aren't registered here (voting, drivers license, even responding to the census) because of statehood. They'd rather stay registered in their home state where they feel their vote matters more. Depending on how the data is collected that could skew things.

[@ivy_47]

I'm glad we at least have presidential electors but at this point congress matters a lot more sadly yep.

[@LoveStallion]

That's why I live in NOVA. You know, so we can have Youngkin... Wait...

[@qrterlber103103103]

DC should not be a state. Founding fathers would of thought it would have to much political power for its size. If you care to vote don't become a resident.

[@MNuttree]

If the income data used in this video comes from the Census Bureau, voter registration wouldn't have any effect. The Census asks where you slept on April 1, not where you vote.

[@pauloleary9464]

He's using the DC MSA, not DC itself. His analysis includes counties like Spotsylvania, Calvert, Loudoun, etc. Google "Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA" and you'll see what I mean.

[@rgriscom]

Like someone else mentioned - it is unclear if the Gini coefficient for college towns includes the incomes of college students, who likely make much less during the time they are studying, but then go on to have higher incomes later. The coefficient could be very different for the non-student population alone.

[@agilemind6241]

Yes but also no. While professors & administrators at universities get paid well, janitors, ground maintenance, and secretaries often don't. Plus there are a whole host of discount-focused industries that cater to the student population which are almost universally minimum-wage jobs - fast food joints, discount supermarkets, cheap clothes stores, cheap bars etc....

[@x--.]

Past experience with the Census says they care only about where you're sleeping most of the time, right now (if people are willing to take the survey). So, I'd expect it to be included.

[@johnlabus7359]

Most metros over a million are going to have college and university students to one degree or the other, and I doubt that it would change the rankings all that much.

[@julietardos5044]

@@agilemind6241 Professors don't get paid all that well, and it's on a downward trend. Colleges have been hiring "adjunct" professors rather than full professors so that they don't have to pay them as much. And then we, as a society, complain about the quality of education...

[@daanachmad4032]

People still don't realise how quantitative data is not as straightforward as they think it is. In fact, it can be misleading.

[@RichardGreen422]

What a great, clear explanation of GINI! Also, when last I ranked MSAs, and found where the 165 millionth person lives, it was in Providence. So the median American lives in an MSA of about 1.6 million. As for college towns, students making no money currently do move the GINI coefficient. I once computed GINI by census tract within LA County, and a Westwood tract (home of UCLA) had the highest. DC has lots of government jobs, which have a pretty attenuated salary scale. And I don't know how people in LA live on less than $50K wither.

[@tristanridley1601]

Canada doesn't do MSAs, but Greater Toronto's gini is the worst of any Canadian metro. The gini index of 0.407 is sad, and I'm shocked to see it would be the BEST in the USA.

[@malloc7108]

The question is also what counts. If you just price out everyone who is low income, the inequality looks good, when really you're just forcing poorer people to commute more.

[@aimxdy8680]

That’s because Toronto and most of canadian middle class is poorer than US middle class. So of course it’ll look good, now put US middle class earnings into canadian cities and watch that income inequality skyrocket. Not to mention, over 20% of americans in 2022 made over 150,000 USD.

[@choui4]

​@@aimxdy8680source or spec?

[@aimxdy8680]

@@choui4 US Data Census bureau S1901 for income distribution.

[@aimxdy8680]

@@choui4 2022 Household income distribution for the US "$150,000 to $199,999 8.7% $200,000 or more 11.5% Median income (dollars) 74755 Mean income (dollars) 105555"

[@edwardmiessner6502]

Not surprised to see Miami up on the list as #2. It has the most unaffordable housing and lowest real wages of any metro area in the country.

[@xlerb2286]

I grew up in a sparsely populated area and Miami was the first "big city" I ever visited. It was a real shock for me to see such a difference between the poor and the wealthy. Where I grew up the poor had an old Chevy and the rich had a new Cadillac. But they both had a roof over their heads, didn't go to bed hungry, and an honest shot at improving their situation.

[@Wadecounty]

It's also infested with local politicians who have absolutely no interest in doing anything to help their constituents.

[@xlerb2286]

@@Wadecounty I can believe it. I wouldn't do well there. We were there for a trade show and when we were setting up the booth the whole day there was a fellow there watching our booth making sure we didn't pick up a tool, not even so much as a screwdriver. And it took us a day to do what should have been an hour long setup job because we had to wait for a rep to unroll the carpet, we couldn't do that ourselves. Another wait for another rep to plug in our demo computer to the outlet, etc. You expect a bit of a shakedown when you are exhibiting at a trade show but that place was crazy.

[@aimxdy8680]

Well, actually the lowest real wage is Los angeles and some deep south cities, but Miami is a close second.

[@wilber504]

@@xlerb2286 that's unions for you. experienced the same thing in New Orleans for trade show set up. come take down - not a union guy in sight.

[@hilupianoservice]

I'm glad to see my beloved Chi Town and Twin Cities aren't on the list. :) The fact that a librarian and a piano technician can live 3 blocks away from the best park in the metro speaks to the availability of mildly affordable housing stock here, but the low income neighborhoods need more investment, big time. Rising property values along the light rail corridors are forcing the residents out as developers rent most if not all of their units at "market" rates, which is a BS term in the first place.

[@CityLover117]

I’m an analytic economics from Binghamton University. Good work using the gini coefficient to display inequality in American cities. I do have to say however, the gini coefficient should be a singular tool in the arsenal of analytics. Ethiopia has a “better” gini score than the US. In fact it’s .35 which is actually really equal. However, most of the country is equally poor. And the average American probably makes 10-14x more than the average Ethiopian with far better access to electricity, clean drinking water, education and healthcare and your typical SoL measurements. Keep up the good work! Love the channel.

[@aimxdy8680]

USAs income inequality comes from a strong upper class and high earners, Most countries income inequality comes from too much poverty. GINI can be misleading if not used right.

[@szurketaltos2693]

Citynerd did cover this in the California cities discussion though, talking about how LA is less top heavy but still more unequal by Gini than SJ/SF.

[@rexx9496]

More equality isn't helpful if it just means everyone is equally miserable.

[@npgibson69]

I believe the GINI for the whole human race is something like .67. That explains a lot about migration and politics. IMO it’s disgraceful.

[@jasonhaworth3753]

“Income inequality is a statement of a societies values. The idea that people who are born rich or got lucky or won the big brain sweepstakes, or lost the debilitating addiction sweepstakes. That those things which are arbitrarily doled out determine whether you deserve to live a life of dignity let alone a life of opulence.” Wow what a great quote

[@danovee9580]

Is it possible that some of the rich got there by hard work, bringing themselves up from the bottom, without "connections" etc.?

[@kryptonsa36]

@@danovee9580 That would be the "get lucky sweepstakes", "big brain sweepstakes", or both.

[@birbluv9595]

I know this is a US video - and you did mention a couple of international places (I think), but where opulence on one block vs poverty in the next block first struck me was Phnom Penh. Since then I’ve seen numerous others. Go to India, where people who have literally nothing hunch on the “sidewalk” under a piece of fabric attached to the high walls surrounding a palatial estate.

[@Jon_Nadeau_]

​@@danovee9580Yup, I think that's what the big brain sweepstakes category is for. Which is good cause the majority of the wealthy worked for it. Very few were just born lucky.

[@alquinn8576]

@@danovee9580 yeah, at some level, if you believe in a deterministic universe, free will is illusory and all moral judgements are absurd. but even so, different policies will have different causal outcomes, so we should want to institute policies _as if_ there is free will, and thus, reward people who are willing to work hard and contribute more than those who don't.

[@teunsmits6586]

I think what always strikes me is how in the US local and regional governments are resonsible for sourcing the funds for their budgets pretty much all on their own. Here in the Netherlands (I know, cliché) municipalities tend to get a majority of their funds from the national government and the provinces get 25% of their funding (collectively) this way. It's not a perfect solution but it does help to get poor localities to avoid the vicious circle of decreasing tax base > lower funds > decreasing tax base.

[@drippiehippie]

I bring this up all the time when people complain about European income tax rates. In most European countries you'll pay a high percentage income tax, but that it. Sales taxes are all included in prices which makes it feel like they don't exist. In the US, the federal income tax might be low, but you have state income taxes, municipal income taxes, property taxes, and a sales tax that gets tacked on at the ends of your purchase. And all of these hyper localized taxes exacerbate inequality and you end up paying just about the same percentage of income (unless you're wealthy).

[@aimxdy8680]

⁠@@drippiehippieAccording to the OCED, Average single american worker paid 24.8% in taxes including state, local etc, meanwhile Netherlands was 27.7%, not to mention Pay and disposable discretionary income is Higher in the US.

[@aimxdy8680]

@@drippiehippieMost of the income inequality in the US is from Upper MIDDLE class. Over 20% of americans make over 150K a year, that’s more than the 11.5% of americans living below the average household poverty line of 22500 USD, heck 12% of americans make over 200K per year.

[@nelus7276]

​@@drippiehippieI've lived in Europe all my life and I don't know how you make this up. I pay income tax, dividend taxes, 21% FFS sales taxes, property tax, property transfer tax, municipal tax, energy tax, water management tax, garbage tax, health care tax, etc, et ffing cetera.

[@TheGrades90]

As a New Yorker, it's fun to see us at/near the top of your lists, but this is a sad one. It's a constant battle, trying to find space to live where you're not losing money on rent. I've worked many jobs over the years, had to move because of the cost of rent, slept in shared rooms with strangers just to meet my rent. Even though I've started making middle-class income, I still feel like I'm looking over my shoulder, expecting my landlord to pull something illegal to price me out--all while my girl and I are enduring persistent structural issues, mold/water damage in our building. It's a great city, but it costs a lot to live here.

[@JesusChrist-qs8sx]

New York City more than anywhere else got absolutely fucked by the last 50 years of urban development policies. The lack of adequate transit coupled with all the downzoning and overregulation has forced NYC to take on more than it really should, and fucked over the city's middle class

[@jasonriddell]

@@JesusChrist-qs8sx and it is getting worse with the collapse of the TAX BASE / "hollowing" out of Manhattan

[@szurketaltos2693]

@JC -- I would say the transit is adequate or good in much of the city, though there are certainly glaring deficiencies (crosstown transit, some transit deserts).

[@szurketaltos2693]

@jasonriddell -- the city apparently found more tax revenue than it thought it would have last year, so while there are problems with commercial/WFH, it seems like potentially manageable problems even by this trash mayor.

[@charlienyc1]

​@@szurketaltos2693To me the ridership is way over capacity. Maybe the infrastructure would be sufficient if MTA substantially increased the number of trains it runs. But the switching problems, etc. can easily derail one's entire commute. Much better examples of transit exist in DC & Chicago for example.

[@danielbatmanj349]

as a dc area resident, my off the dome idea as to why we do so well is bc of the stability of gov and gov contractor jobs

[@omarrolle3842]

There’s also really good mass transit in DC so lower socioeconomic people have more opportunities to get to higher paying jobs without a car

[@dmike3507]

Makes sense, that must be true of Fairbanks as well. No one in their right mind would live there if it weren't for the military.

[@danielbatmanj349]

new york also has good mass transit and it tops the list tho@@omarrolle3842

[@triaxe-mmb]

0:40 Topic Introduction 2:02 What is GINI Coefficient and Methodology 5:59 List Introduction 6:24 10 - Cleveland, OH 7:08 9 - San Jose, CA 7:49 8 - Tampa/St. Pete, FL 8:18 7 - Birmingham, AL 8:52 6 - New Orleans, LA 9:27 5 - Greater Boston, MA 9:54 4 - San Francisco -Oakland, CA 10:48 3 - Los Angeles, CA 12:10 Inequality and Urbanism 12:47 Honorable Mentions (5 US Metros with lowest GINI Coefficients) 14:22 Dishonorable Mentions 15:03 2 - Miami, FL 15:43 1 - NYC, NY

[@catsupchutney]

Before Jordan Peterson went full wingnut, he had made some cogent points about how income inequality destroys societies.

[@robhousehold]

Pretty sure he's always been a wingnut. A broken clock will still have the correct time twice a day, but wrong every other time

[@kettlemoraine1]

DC is waaaayyy more equitable than NY, SF, Boston, Miami, etc., because it's absolutely *dominated* by high-paying federal government jobs. Everyone I knew at the U.S. EPA (including me) had a nice six-figure salary, and the probability of anyone getting fired was basically zero. So, while we were all passionate about EPA's mission (protecting human health and the environment), it was extremely low-pressure work, with very high salaries (and a pension that's nothing compared to what it was 30 years ago, but it's still a decent pension). People didn't want to say it out loud, but we were all overpaid. But we DID talk about the "golden handcuffs" ALL the time. :) I was one of the few who quit before the "minimum retirement age" (typically 56!). I had saved enough to live modestly for the next several decades, exploring cities and enjoying amazing content like @CityNerd. :) No need to line your grave with gold. :)

[@charlienyc1]

Nice work if you can get it.

[@Skip6235]

Does the data include the unhoused? I feel like Seattle is conspicuously absent from this list, but that may be because the poorest people are forced completely out of housing and are almost entirely unhoused. If they aren’t being counted, than that really doesn’t paint the entire inequality picture.

[@Jester-uh9xg]

The US Census does include the homeless if they are at shelters, soup kitchens, or other kinds of services focused on them.

[@julietardos5044]

@@Jester-uh9xg I briefly worked at the Census. They did count homeless people living under bridges and in parks, etc, not just at shelters/soup kitchens.

[@xenotiic8356]

From what I see, yes they did, and it seems that's just how bad the rest of the country is.

[@dagwould]

Democrat policies at busily and ineffectively at work.

[@MB-xe8bb]

@@dagwould Alabama and Mississippi are Republican states, and I keep seeing videos and statistics that show they are hell-holes.

[@nerds-nonsense]

"CityNerd" is hella accurate, this is said with so much love for what you do.

[@Merzui-kg8ds]

I visited Tampa, FL about 9 years ago and was shocked when one resident straight-faced bragged that his neighborhood was not close to public transportation. I was slow on picking up the implications of that statement, but I got there eventually.

[@vaderbuckeye36]

Raleigh is probably high due to the number of government offices and universities in the area.

[@ecurewitz]

Can confirm, there used to be a massive disparity between rich and poor in the Boston area, same goes for Connecticut

[@nathanrooney2027]

I’m very surprised to see Pittsburgh did not make this list. Our Gini number for the city is .4996 and the whole metro area is .46. I think it’s easy for me to think my own place of residence is special in some good or bad way. For example, I was so surprised that Pittsburgh wasn’t one of the worst cities in the country for surface level parking in the downtown center. One of the reasons I love your videos is that forces me to consider the national perspective on these issues.

[@Zero-Gravity-Ind]

I live in Raleigh and if I had to guess I'd say it's a mix of being spread out fairly far and having a wide range of solid jobs (tech, colleges, biochemistry, etc). Plus for years now I've seen even gas stations offering to pay over 15/hour. Also, it doesn't have a highly desired downtown, so while it is more expensive downtown, it's not crazy. All the tech people inexplicably seem to move here to live way out of the city proper. Blows my mind (as a tech person about to move to the heart of Chicago).

[@isaacliu896]

Ed Glaeser covers this in "Triumph of the City". Cities are the most unequal places not because they create poverty (and in fact they do the opposite to a massive extent), but because they are places where the poor move for opportunity. It's especially true in the developing world - millions crowd into Mumbai slums because, as bad as it may seem to us, it's seen as better than being in a rural Indian village.

[@alquinn8576]

under-rated point!

[@markmeyer-delvendahl9766]

I am from Germany and I lived in Hoover, Alabama another suburb of Birmingham for ten months as an exchange student. And I have to say the wealth inequalities in the Birmingham metro area are just wild. I did cross country and track and field, so I got to see a few other suburbs and their schools. The whole city of Birmingham is really poor, lots of empty lots, abandoned strip malls and bad roads. Every suburb to the south of downtown on the other hand is pretty average/upper middle class (Homewood, Hoover) to ultra rich (Mountain Brook). Mountain Brook is close to downtown Birmingham, but the mountains in the area act as a strong barrier between the cities, so you don't really notice the proximity. The whole area is extremely car-centric, many residential streets don't have sidewalks. I very much missed sidewalks and riding my bike when I was there. But the people there are also extremely hospitable.

[@laurie7689]

Yes, I was noticing that the map view he was showing for B'Ham didn't really show the natural topography of the area. The main city sits inside a bowl ringed by small mountains. That was a good observation you made. There are quite a few cities, suburbs, etc. that are rich next to those the are poor with very little interaction between them because of the physical barriers created by geography. Even in the mostly middle class small city where I live (not in B'Ham), the hills divide the city into pockets of haves and have nots. We have had to work with the areas geography in planning on where to place housing, business districts, city administration, etc. It has been a struggle for our city to find a suitable location to build its new school when we outgrew the other one. There isn't a lot of flat land in the area I'm in.

[@musicmakerman867]

Part of the divide has to do with the historical layout of the steel industry and the wind blowing pollution in the area across areas where lower-income residents live today. The south portion of Birmingham (ie hoover, homewood, vestavia, mnt brook, are nearly their own city with a stark divide over red mountain.@@laurie7689

[@MB-co6qj]

So what is your German city GINI Mark?

[@clawsoon]

An interesting data point from your neighbour: The highest Gini coefficient for a Canadian city is around 0.33, for Toronto (according to the Statistics Canada infographic "Income inequality highest in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver".) I wonder why even the lowest American cities are ~0.1 higher than the highest Canadian city.

[@noseboop4354]

Canada's second largest city, Montreal, even breaks the 0.3 floor, at only 0.296

[@mayam9575]

Could be how the data is collected. I don't know if he is using pre or post tax numbers. Progressive taxes and social services like food stamps will swing a city by that much or more. It could also be a boundaries thing. He is looking at whole metro areas. This sounds like it is just looking at the city itself. Does Toronto have wealthy suburbs?

[@eugenetswong]

I'm not surprised to see Toronto at the top. I thought that Ottawa would, though. Maybe we get lower numbers, because we're less political? I don't know for sure, but I get the impression that even when we make bad decisions, it's just a bit more business oriented than political. America has the strongest lobbies, legal attack organizations, and unions.

[@clawsoon]

@@mayam9575 Interesting questions. I found a map from datalabto called "The most detailed income map of Toronto you've ever seen", and it shows basically all the suburbs as being part of "Toronto census division". I'm not sure if that's what StatsCan would've used in their definition of Toronto for the Gini coefficient calculation, though. On that map, it looks like the richest and poorest areas are in Toronto itself. That might be partly because Toronto was amalgamated with a bunch of its suburbs in the 1990s, so poorer areas like Jane and Finch were joined into the same city as richer areas like Rosedale. The suburbs that are still suburbs (Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughn, Markham) look like they're a mix of richer (Vaughn, Mississauga) and poorer (Brampton, Markham) than Toronto itself.

[@znail4675]

@@mayam9575 Canada is just that different from USA. The main two factors that differs between places with High or low Gini index is if there are lots of poor people and if all jobs gets a decent salary or not.

[@everacite]

DMV theories - DC/MD have pretty strong safety nets (relative to US cities), a lot of workers (especially workers who hold college/advanced degrees) receiving federal salaries lower than what they would earn in a non-federal job, a strong and constant demand for relatively well (compared to other parts of the US) compensated job that don’t require a college degree in roles in the government (e.g. custodians, security, maintenance, etc) Edit: also DC seems relatively more integrated in terms of income levels which might provide more opportunities for more benefits financially for less wealthy individuals compared to other US cities Edit 2: also even though the average and median rent is kinda high in DC, there is also plenty of housing that is relatively affordable that is metro accessible if you had a lower income and wanted to take advantage of the access and urbanism of the core of the city

[@TheBestMCScavenger]

I’m a public policy student and thank you for making this video about the Gini coefficient! It’s often talked about on a national level in my undergraduate classrooms and I hadn’t thought to measure the gini coefficient of individual cities

[@patrickboldea599]

DC probably shows up because government workers are a much larger portion of the population there. They have standardized pay scales and make relatively high incomes, but not astonishingly high incomes.

[@kjh23gk]

What's the cost of living like in DC?

[@patrickboldea599]

@@kjh23gk pretty damn high. My best estimate would be somewhere a bit south of NYC prices.

[@DrSeaLionMD]

Man, I never thought this was when we would see Raleigh on a CityNerd video

[@themogus]

Hey, don’t worry. We were featured in his “most car dependent cities” list.

[@hectorquinones5579]

I wasn't expecting my college town to show up here. I don't know if you knew, but Mayagüez is a major college town in Puerto Rico.

[@Geoffology]

DC has been building new housing at a faster rate than other places in the last few years. It's more affordable in the DMV than people think!

[@denislomakin247]

This was my thought, there’s also a large older housing stock that’s been well preserved and rent controlled, in addition to new more expensive housing construction which absorbs a lot of the transplants.

[@GeeEm1313]

Lol. I guess you've never been to Bethesda, Potomac, or half of Fairfax County.

[@Geoffology]

@@GeeEm1313 what about Rockville, south arlington, Annandale, silver spring, etc.

[@silverscrub]

My apartment in admo is $2400, the same apartment in silver spring is like $2200. It is not remotely affordable, don’t be ridiculous

[@Geoffology]

@@silverscrub you can live in Arlington for $1500, no one is making you live in AdMo.

[@EricWort]

Would be interesting to see the college town Gini coefficients with and without the students

[@Bizcachi]

As Puerto Rican resident, there are many reasons I can point to to why it is this way (including colonialism) but widespread corruption within the state government is a BIG one

[@matthewhall5571]

The federal government never set you guys up for success from the very beginning. Whether it's the Jones Act or Congress eliminating some of the support that used to bring jobs to the island. They have been screwing Puerto Rico for decades and they will keep doing it until a day comes when we finally have a SCOTUS with enough honor to point out that the treatment we give Puerto Rico, DC, and the US territories, is not actually a democratic republic like our Constitution claims it should be and it must be changed.

[@angellacanfora]

I'm dying to go to Puerto Rico and visit the land where my grandfather hailed from. Do you feel like PR is ignored by the US or does the fed government rule with a heavy hand?

[@stevedolan8095]

My belief is that Statehood would make this better, but I have no idea if that is true?

[@guerillawhite3083]

@@stevedolan8095 to me, as someone who has done a lot of reading on this, the only option is independence

[@MB-xe8bb]

I am familiar with a company trying to build something in Puerto Rico, and the government corruption and incompetence has delayed this for 5 years past where it should have been built already, and it still hasn't even received government approvals to start. I remember reading that even a woman from FEMA was charged with corruption, and FEMA was supposed to supervise the government to PREVENT corruption from interfering.

[@Soporificat]

One explanation for why the Gini number is that low in DC is that a large proportion of professionals in the city are federal government workers who are paid according to a set pay scale. This pay scale has a cap, and at the higher ends, with senior, highly educated people, they are getting a much lower income than they would otherwise get in other industries.

[@CreepyBlackDude]

This was a really great video, very informative. And I literally laughed out loud when you Googled how to report a pothole in Fairbanks, because I did watch your last live stream!

[@LApedestrian]

DC has the highest proportion of students in the country. Many students actually live in the district, while many workers commute from MD or VA.

[@Sp4mMe]

Interestingly, Germany, which has a lower GINI index overall seems to have worse or as bad numbers for many of its large cities. They are around 0.5 on average, slightly below and above usually, but some can get quite high. Heidelberg for example 0.56, Düsseldorf 0.54, Frankfurt a.M. 0.53 etc. They also all seem to trend towards getting worse.

[@wernerrietveld]

If you only measure within city limits it makes sense to me. My impression is that suburbs, just outside city limits houses a lot of middle class people, who want and can afford a good big house, but not in the central city. Poorer people stay in old small houses there, while rich people can afford shiney skyscrapers, repurposed industrial lofts and the likes.

[@patrickboldea599]

It’s not surprising. Financial and high productive industry sectors produce a lot of inequality because they bring a lot of high income earners to an area while also often times being the places where desperate and the poor have to come for any opportunity or access to quality services. That’s kinda common sense to some degree. It’s part of why I think this analysis is kinda nonsense at a metro level.

[@Sp4mMe]

@@patrickboldea599 I don't think it's surprising that cities are worse than rural areas (though it's far from being a given - lower population in rural areas also makes the effect of a few wealthy people, if there are any, way more pronounced), however, I do think it's somewhat of a surprise that a) US cities don't actually look all that bad in this comparison, so perhaps further investigation how this compares globally is warranted b) there's been a massive increase in a relatively short time. Munich seems to have gone from around 0.3 in 2005 to 0.5 in 2023. No "it's just always like that" in a city about this, clearly.

[@patrickboldea599]

@@Sp4mMe I cannot speak directly to Munich in particular with a ton of expertise, but generally speaking a lot of the reason why GINI coefficients in American cities are so bad is not because “the billionaires.” It’s because we’ve seen a lot of professional class jobs offer increasingly higher salaries while labor class jobs really have not grown at a corresponding level. It’s also kind of a trick of how you measure inequality. If I make 100k and you make 10k and we both get a 5% raise, the gap between us has widened even if our relative incomes increased by the same amount.

[@aimxdy8680]

In america, the income inequality is mostly from having too much High Earners, in most countries it’s from too much poverty.

[@gooseberries608]

SF has very strong rent control laws as well as having Prop 13, which allows for many lower income people to stay in the city despite making low wages. My neighbors either have lived here for thirty years and are poor/working class, or they moved here in the last decade and own teslas and work in tech lol. And, of course, the city has many unhoused people who of course don’t make much income. So while many people have been pushed out of SF due to lack of affordability, there are enough lower income people who are somehow able to stay that I don’t find our Gini shocking at all.

[@kennethridesabike]

I think what would’ve been helpful is showing Gini coefficients for cities outside of the US just to show how US cities stack against top of mind international cities

[@alquinn8576]

a quick google gave me this (no idea if true): "Of the 290 OECD regions covered, London has the third highest Gini coefficient (0.58), only behind Corsica and Brussels" Brussels?! 🤯

[@matilda2895]

@@alquinn8576 On top of being the capital of Belgium, Brussels is basically the capital of European Union with many of the most important EU institutions being there. NATO headquarters are also located in Brussels. In Europe, if you want to be close to power, you want to be in Brussels. There’s goverment officials, politicians, their assistants, diplomats, lobbyists, CEOs etc. Honestly, i’m not that surprised that there may not be much left for the average person - since the significant ”industries” mostly employ highly educated people from other countries, the locals can’t really benefit from them in the same way they could benefit from tourism or exporting products for example. I have not researched this or anything, this is just my guess based on my personal experience of visiting there.

[@alquinn8576]

@@matilda2895 yet in the US, Washington D.C. is much lower. Why would the seat of EU administration be different than the US?

[@matilda2895]

@@alquinn8576 Interesting point! I wonder how they get those numbers - could citizenship affect it? If in D.C. the people who work for government etc. are still US citizens but in Belgium they’re mostly citizens of other EU countries, still paying taxes to their respective home countries while working in Brussels, maybe that could affect the statistics? (In case they don’t have access to other countries’ citizens tax/income data)

[@alquinn8576]

@@matilda2895 often, metrics for such things are harmonized to a good extent across the OECD, but in the case of Gini, you are possibly right that it is an issue with definition and/or measurement method

[@godminnette2]

Grand Rapids is likely on the low Gini Coefficient list for two reasons: 1. It is a fairly sprawling city that contains a larger portion of nearby suburbs than most cities, capturing a larger share of the middle class residing in suburbia. 2. As Grand Rapids started booming in economic growth in the 2010s, they recognized that the impact of the growth was disproportionate and the key compounding factors for it, including many of the things commonly talked about in new urbanism circles, and took action on them. The latter is one of many reasons I'm looking to move to GR in the next decade.

[@rhmendelson]

Interesting…will put some research on the radar to look into what they did. Thanks for the fyi!

[@Nater-Tot-97]

I grew up in Grand Rapids and lived there for 4 years after college. I think another factor here is that salaries for white-collar work in Grand Rapids are lower than for the same jobs in bigger cities. I can attest from personal experience that typical salaries in tech in the GR metro area are much lower than in other parts of the country. On the lower end of the income chart, progressive policies in Michigan in recent years have helped bring up wages for workers who make at or near minimum wage. These 2 opposite forces I think push everyone away from the extremes of incomes, which would by definition result in a lower gini index.

[@rowanbixler4700]

@@Nater-Tot-97 Even as someone who lives in Grand Rapids and grew up here, seeing it as an honorable mention and seeing your's and @godminnette2's explanations is really eye-opening. People from here always like to call it a "perfect sized city" for how many amenities it offers for it's size, but I think the policies used to reduce inequality here are severely underappreciated. Also, there's a reason people rightfully sh!t on East Grand Rapids and the other wealthy suburbs east of the city for separating themselves and not contributing their fair share

[@godminnette2]

@@Nater-Tot-97 I agree with your second point, though I am uncertain of the first. I don't know when you last lived there, but GR saw rapid growth over the 2010s, almost double that of the rest of Michigan and the US. As outlined in their 2019 and 2020 plans: "Data from 2013 shows that out the country’s 52 largest cities, Grand Rapids is the second worst city for economic outcomes for Black Americans, as measured by homeownership, median household income and entrepreneurship or self-employment. "The typical Black household in Grand Rapids earns only half as much as the typical White household, and the rate of unemployment is nearly four times as high for Black workers as for White workers." "When adjusted for inflation, average earnings for all workers in Grand Rapids have decreased by 4% since 2010, while wages for the top earners have increased by roughly 7%." "Although the overall median household income in the city is $45,000, Black and Hispanic households earn $27,000- $39,000, or barely half of the median income for White house-holds ($52,000)." Indeed, when using the tools provided in this video's description, we can see the GINI coefficient rise through the 2010s and into 2020 and 2021, but in 2022 fall back to 2019 levels. How much this is to do with the pandemic's aftereffects, state policy, or city policy I'm uncertain; we'd have to run an analysis on how the rest of the state fared and what policy decisions other municipalities took.

[@cowboyxboombap]

Great points. The odd thing about the GR metro area is that it includes whole ass other cities like Holland, Muskegon, and Big Rapids with literal wilderness in between. People have remote hunting cabins inside of that metro area.

[@Jsoberon]

Happy to know the "Walkable Urbanism for the Rich, car dependency for the masses" line that I said is still being used to describe Miami, and is becoming more relevant.

[@pex3]

Only theory I have for DC low inequality is lots of good public sector jobs

[@scottsnyder2726]

One of the best videos I’ve ever seen. Grand Rapids has 21% of workforce in manufacturing; so higher wages for workers and not much of a finance sector. Riv-SB is location for many workers traveling into LA area. Low poverty rate of 12.8%. The rich don’t want to live there and the poor can’t afford it nor afford to travel to jobs. Largest employment sector in DC is government jobs, well represented by unions - fair pay and benefits. Raleigh is one of fastest growing employment hubs, low unemployment rate of 3.0%. Most importantly it is a center for professional services and has high educational levels. But is not a center for finance - so the residents work for a living. No surprise NY and Miami top the list. Actually no surprise for the top 5, but surprised San Jose wasn’t higher. To me in the US Gini Index highest in areas which have highest concentrations of capital intensive industry sectors; finance, technology, venture capital, private equity, etc. This is where Neoliberalism has reached it’s zenith in the Western world. Privatization, deregulation, globalization, with reductions in government spending but with vast fortunes spent buying political favor solely to benefit the elites’ interests. Despite societal advantages for capital investment, the rewards flow solely to select few. Or has been stated by others - Privatization of profits and socialization of the losses.

[@nevreiha]

UK gini coef: 0.350 while in london its 0.580

[@JohnEP223]

Meritocracy is not a lottery. True, there are *some* factors of luck. However, if you punish people who work hard, and reward people who don't, you create more problems than you are trying to solve.

[@useodyseeorbitchute9450]

He tried to go into route that there is a biologic (genetic) lottery, which later determines the of most what we value in merit. (~80% of variance for cognitive skills is explainable by genetics and ~50% of conscientious) I'd say that I'd have to partially agree with him on that point, though he seems not to think it through. In order to "own" some center right people, he had to make an argument that if analyzed in details would be strong and valid endorsement of far-right. Which is an interesting idea for election year, though the US recently does not have that candid candidate...

[@DaFanky]

I legit was about to ask you to make this video. Nice.

[@Adolar]

I love how you’re just saying exactly what you think now. Great takes and info today.

[@DaHappyHeathen]

DC shows up so high because of federal employees and federal contractors. Loads of secure high-paying labor, basically an entire continent's-worth of program analysts, operations research and IT contractors.

[@rileynicholson2322]

It's important to remember that the gini does not take into account the "shape" of inequality. A society with a reasonable basic income might still be quite unequal if the middle class basically didn't exist but the top percentiles still have very high incomes. Conversely, you could have a society with a strong middle class but a lot of abject poverty and a small number of people starving. The index is great for quick and dirty comparisons, but it's also a good idea for people interested to look into greater detail at the Lorenz curve and other measures of inequality like wealth, source of income, etc.

[@kylelippincott2915]

Dc is high because of all of the high paying government jobs in an around the district. Maryland has the highest or one of the highest wages in the nation for the same reason.

[@kylelippincott2915]

Also I’m surprised Baltimore didn’t make the list given the difference between downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, but the pop has declined so much it’s barely at 600K :(

[@NilesMontblair]

So glad you’re talking about this. I live in San Antonio and I’m loving all of the downtown development that’s going on in our city, but I’m not so excited that you can’t really enjoy any of it unless you’re wealthy

[@eugenetswong]

That's why I think that middle class neighbourhoods need to have those 4-over-1 developments. Those need to be the norms. I prefer 2-over-1-over-1-over-1.

[@mariowatches]

surprised Texas wasn't on the list at all. speaking as a former DFW resident.

[@aimxdy8680]

@@mariowatchesTexas looks good mainly because it’s compared to california, but when compared to the midwest, mountain states and the DC area. It’s not that great in comparison.

[@knishofdeath]

Our household income is $150K+ and with student debt, we can hardly afford to live in a 700 sq ft apartment in Seattle. I have no idea how anyone is supposed to make a comfortable living anymore. Certainly buying anything is probably forever out of reach and it feels like it's only a matter of time before we get priced out. Not sure how families that make considerably less than we do survive at all.

[@birbluv9595]

If you can, don’t live in Seattle. If you can get a job in one of the smaller cities, you’ll find the places I have lived affordable.

[@alquinn8576]

yup, Seattle and (I don't know the local politics there but just gonna guess: NIMBYs) are the problem. I was making $105K in Missouri and renting a 2 bedroom for $515/month 😆

[@jasonriddell]

@@alquinn8576 microsoft and Boeing plus all the DOT COM companies that pay insane amounts have a cousin that programs for microsoft and has since the early 2000s and they are looking to buy in seattle area - I dont know there exact pay but I know as a motor mechanic I could NOT AFFORD TO MOVE THERE and I make over the average and am "more then OK" not in seattle

[@szurketaltos2693]

The answer for most people in your situation who do have houses is probably generational wealth tbh. Which means that if you want to buy, you gotta move either way out to the burbs or to a more affordable city.

[@JarrodBaniqued]

Good video as always! I do wonder why the Futura typeface was replaced, even though I definitely don’t mind the switch to Open Sauce One (or is that Neue Plak?)

[@Bartzyx]

Wondering why DC is on the honorable list? The Washington metropolitan area is the most highly educated large MSA is in the country. A very large portion of workers work for the federal government or its contractors. Another large contingent work for law firms, lobbyists, and NGOs, all which pay at least decent money. There is also a large professional services sector. Because most workers are so educated/skilled, there's a constant shortage of unskilled labor which drives up wages for even the most basic jobs.

[@_bats_]

I love the snarky pothole reporting part, having watched your most recent KZbin live reaction. Great stuff. Hopefully you can find easily-Googleable information for us in more future videos.

[@dez7800]

Crazy that on one side of the border in Québec you're at a gini coefficient of 0.282 and then accross the border in NY State you end up at 0.515...

[@noseboop4354]

Quebec has the highest taxes in North America and a ton of social welfare programs. Great place to live if you're poor, not so great if you're rich.

[@dez7800]

@@noseboop4354 It's a matter of values, to put it simply... I value equality of oportunities and to help the others in need. My parents were taxed 45-50% income tax for decades in their careers and they were fine with paying their part, as big as it may have been. I'm graduating in a few months in engineering and will probably be paying lots of taxes too and I don't mind. I think the US is very individualistic and tribalistic country and I think the mentality is a bit different in Québec. For us in Québec, it is unthinkable that someone would declare bankrupcy for medical care and we heavily subsidize education. Those are all societal choices!

[@nicocorbo4153]

great video ray. as a huge gini coefficient advocate, i really appreciated this video. a real thorn in the side of the gdp per capita camp

[@FlyxPat]

Things are so bad in Sydney Australia a report recently said Sydney could come a ‘city without grandchildren’. The new NSW premier pledged to build more medium density so ‘our kids’ aren’t forced to leave for other cities.

[@APersonNamedDanni]

So for my hometown and current location, Raleigh, I think the reason is because local governments across the triangle have been greenlighting a ton of development and infrastructure over the last few decades as the tech sector boomed. The problem, which will come due in the near to medium term future, is that the development has started increasingly trending towards upper-middle single detached housing and large road projects. The younger demographics are getting increasingly squeezed out, at a rate above the national average. I think in the medium term, raleigh will likely end up moving from the good list to the bad list, as all of the bills come due and the tax base dries up as all of the younger residents start moving to more affordable cities nearby. The city of raleigh has been trying to mitigate this somewhat by increasingly zoning for larger and more dense living spaces, but these have come in the form of 5 over 1 apartments over retail, not condos, so its rental market only. These are aimed at the tech sector people, and their wages have been stagnating. The solution I don't think will end up solving the problem until they get better (they sometimes do the right moves) about requiring permitting to come with options that aren't two bedroom upscale apts

[@benwhite5452]

As a DC resident myself, that finding was a bit shocking to me. I was just thinking yesterday that DC can increasingly have a "playground for the rich" feel to me that I previously associated with San Francisco and Manhattan. However, I won't necessarily take my own anectodal experience over the data. For plausible explanations, I would echo what others have said, which is that the federal pay scale, and the tendency for most federal contracting jobs to be not too far off (with the exception of executives and some specialized positions), has a lot of explanatory power. You definitely encounter lots of DC white collar professionals who are delusional about how their 250k salary "isn't that much" while they're passing by destitute, struggling, or solidly lower-middle-class people, and no amount of showing them mean and median income data can sway them. However, if you compare DC to more private sector focused economies where there's an almost logarithmic increase in income for the higher deciles (or something, liberal arts guy here), it makes sense that the lobbyists and handful of people operating outside of the federal paradigm can't skew things too far.

[@linuxman7777]

Say what you will about Religion, but it can be a great tool to help the poor and reduce inequality. I remember reading about how Puritan New England was quite equal because the religion forced people to work, so there was no lower classes, and the religion also had issues with mass accumulation of wealth.

[@mattbalfe2983]

My DC area theory is that you have a lot of middle income public sector earners. Whether that's back office military, cybersecurity and back office IT/ database admin, proposal writers, lower level beuarocrats, nonprofits...etc.

[@nickkohut9291]

You showed Murphy Ave in Sunnyvale CA with cars on it - it's now a very cool fully pedestrianized street actually. A great place to walk around and hang out!

[@johnperniciaro785]

Those of us who by accident of fate were fortunate enough to have seen our once great cities with strong & prosperous working classes (NYC for example, before the unraveling of the 70's) could bring you almost to tears with our stories of cities where broadly speaking not-rich families/people had access to so much of what our American Civilization the envy of the world.

[@meganmeyer8525]

Thank goodness you told us where to go to report potholes in Fairbanks Alaska. I never would have been able to figure that one out. Finally, someone who knows what the urbanist youtubers need more of!

[@michaelsiler5023]

The only way an urban area can exist is if the rural population is extremely productive. The production of food and raw materials is what fuels a city. So no people in the city shouldn’t just run things that could potentially harm the productivity of the rural population. The populations have different priorities and benefit from that.

[@MrDRSMAX]

DC does so well becuase of the high number of Federal Employees who make a decent income and are union members. I think high union (UAW) membership also explains why Grand Rapids (auto industry) does well.

[@aditj]

I appreciated the Gini explanation.

[@dl6860]

Income inequality isn't an issue - the whole video is based on an incorrect assumption. Shame you mislead viewers.

[@mikeymullins5305]

Sorry that your heart has been hardened. Hopefully you will learn to feel compassion again.

[@dl6860]

@@mikeymullins5305 sorry that you're so nearsighted that you think that income inequality is an issue. The difference between wealth generated is not the issue. the issue is the ease of mobility between socioeconomic classes. If the range of socioeconomic classes was as great as possible, and the ease of mobility was as high as possible, people could choose the life that suits themselves without needing to output as much as any other socioeconomic class to get by. That's literally the definition of diversity. Let people life as they please and lower the barriers to wealth creation so that anyone can live on that spectrum as they see fit.

[@stylo9000]

A lot of people talking about our DC-area good government jobs without talking about how those payscales and working conditions got that way: Labor unions. The federal government is more unionized than nearly any private sector employer its size. Labor unions fought for those payscales that are now the envy of the country, and set the standard for private sector contractors. Our area also has some of the better tenant and housing protections in the country, with TOPA laws in DC and minimum affordable unit regulations in Montgomery County MD. It got that way because of decades of homegrown activists fighting for their right to live in the area. Those fights are ongoing - see the Stomp Out Slumlords movement. A very wide-ranging and fast Metro system allows for long commutes across the region without needing to purchase a car. Lastly, DC and MoCo have been hotbeds of progressivism for several decades at least, and NoVA is rapidly trending that direction as well and swinging Virginia blue. Politics matters!! Glad to see you touching on it.

[@mikedodger7898]

Very interesting. Thank you for great content. I never knew about this metric, yet it makes sense. I checked and my community is the third highest in Canada at 0.385. Now I know why the USA feels so different when I visit. In 2022 I visited New Orleans and wow, I could feel the animosity from the every day folk. "New Orleans is ranked No. 2 with a coefficient of 0.5655."

[@ericbruun9020]

Bus drivers are not low paid workers in many cities. They have Cadillac health plans, high hourly rates, and lots of OT if they want it.

[@thegriffinnews]

In my city the busses are advertising a $7,500 sign on bonus! They're desperate.

[@ericbruun9020]

@@thegriffinnews Many places are desperate. But it is not because of the wage rate, it is because of seniority rules, excessive background checks, and sometimes even reduced pay for the first few years in addition to having to work graveyard shift.

[@danielappell3484]

Have you done a comparison of city economies using Hans Rosling's data. I remember a study he talked about comparing the GDP of cities based on their population. The study compared cities from around the world and found that on a per capita bases cities hover around being 15% more productive and 15% more efficient. The larger a city is the greater the range of income, the easier it is to police, etc. I imagine if a city is above that 15% line it is succeeding in one way or another, and if it below that 15% line it is falling behind. I wonder if you could do a similar comparison of North American cities if you haven't already done so.

[@user-vg6sg7kh1q]

I live in a capital metro area where my city in 2021 had a gini of 0.292. There is a lot of people working for the government where low income job make a better salary than normal and the high income job like good engineer are paid less than in the private sector. People have a retirement fund that keep them at a good level at retirement and if one people in a couple work for the government they are covered by health and dental insurance. I am not surprised that Washington is doing good on that list

[@gcvrsa]

DC is probably where it is because government jobs don't pay as well as private sector jobs, at the high end, so the large concentration of government jobs tends to be a limiting factor on the upper income bounds, but conversely, government jobs at the low end probably pay a little better than equivalent private sector service jobs, so there may be a similar limiting factor on the lower bounds. This is, of course, just a wild ass guess.

[@justingerald]

Yeah, NYC makes sense. Tons of services, transit, options, but just astronomical living costs. The area you focused in on has giant towers (one of which I live in, as you know) and the country's largest housing project.

[@starventure]

NYC has some of the most egregiously wasteful uses of land of any city out there. Go look at east Brooklyn,/south Queens if you don't understand why.

[@jasonshaw2065]

Can your chicken and egg root cause question ever be answered in cities with high transience/mobility? How can we measure the effect of city policy on income inequality when the population in high demand cities is in constant flux? If you could do this ranking in cities with the least population fluctuation, maybe you could see which cities can be credited with spreading equity most evenly. Great video thanks

[@alquinn8576]

yeah this is a great point. the Gini of any individual city is going to be partially a function of massive self-selection bias

[@meganmeyer8525]

I missed the patreon sneak peek notification but I guess my brain is wired to check for CityNerd videos every Wednesday around 9!

[@rebauer2000]

Very smart to look at median and mean HH income. Long tail distribution toward the higher incomes pulls up the mean relative to median. In other words, a few very high income HHs pull up mean.

[@mabyewest]

So interesting to see how many of the best US cities barely get a score below 0.45, when some of the worst cities in the Netherlands barely go above 0.32. Really goes to show what is considered good social security.

[@alquinn8576]

though median per capita income (PPP) in the US is ~10% higher than the netherlands

[@aimxdy8680]

Netherlands doesn’t have high paying jobs like big tech jobs for upper middle class-like the US. Of course it’ll have lower inequality.

[@aimxdy8680]

By the way, Median disposable income (PPP) in Netherlands is 68.2% of the US.

[@ConradLumm]

I've been waiting for years for you to have some reason to mention my adopted home of Grand Rapids! There's a small but active community of urbanists here if you ever want to learn about this terrific place.

[@gustavoa3342]

Puerto Rico mentioned i'd love to see you do a full video on Puerto Rico at some point

[@elizabethblack8907]

The Gini index for my zip code is .37. This is very interesting stuff. Thanks for putting the video together and sharing the links

[@jackmerrill8424]

The phone number for potholes in Fairbanks is appreciated! That guy really just tried his hardest to gatekeep the idea of being an urbanist. Crazy.

[@icemoneycooks5299]

Raleigh during the pandemic exploded people came from all over from high income areas and the locals make maybe half of what the new people make who just moved here with remote jobs. Also, prices of everything doubled but still looks affordable compared to larger cities but the locals have not gotten big wage growth.

[@jeffreywilliams3421]

My guess on D.C. is that many of the really affluent people who work and live in the region end up living in No. VA, so the District itself ends up much more balanced, but that's just a wild guess.

[@MrEshen25]

I grew up in Ann Arbor (and visit frequently) and live in the Bay Area. The scale of social issues are day and night despite being close in the Gini coefficient. That doesn't support your hypothesis.

[@MrEshen25]

Though college towns are filled with post docs, and grad students (whoa re usually poor ,because they haven't started their career yet. Perhaps they shouldn't be included in this analysis because that artificially inflates the gini coeff.

[@shannonackley2526]

Bridgeport-Stamford is an area you should do a deeper dive into. As part of the NYC tri-state region there is such a divergence of equality but solving it is not easy.

[@_mball_]

"It's an election year and I'm just gonna be annoying" is definitely why some of us are here! :) For SF vs San Jose -- while there are more tech jobs in San Jose, the area is much larger than SF. And a decent number (for SF's population) commute from SF to the South Bay. The SF metro area also includes the upper part of the Peninsula and parts of Marin county which are affluent communities, often supported by tech or pharmaceutical jobs too. It's definitely a little surprising but not too much, IMO.

[@useodyseeorbitchute9450]

When think about it, in the US almost all major cities are governed by Democrats.

[@Nativeicons]

My guess to why DC has a low income disparity is the amount of Federal jobs.

[@LoveStallion]

Unfortunately, Salt Lake (and Utah as a whole) has gotten WAY more expensive since the pandemic. My wife and I used to flirt with moving back there after having gone to BYU so we'd be closer to family, but now? It's nuts. It's worse than DC!

[@jw77019]

When I became an adult in the early 1980s it was possible to live decently on an entry level pay rate with a high school diploma. It was easy to work up the ranks as a white collar office worker and buy some nice things and take trips during the three weeks of paid vacation I received. That is no longer possible.

[@AdamGianforte]

Really surprised Chicago didn't make the list.

[@chasegrange1288]

Thanks for covering this topic for us!

[@Changsnoop]

I do wonder how much state policies affect the Gini coefficient -- for example people who need more social support might find it easier to get back on their feet in California (to its credit), but which could make Californian cities appear more unequal just by virtue of migration.

[@JCDofNYC]

As someone who after college moved out of my parent's Central Park adjacent home, and moved into a place in the East Village -- which, along with the Lower East Side, was still at the time (1983) affordable and diversely populated. Then the urban malaise known as gentrification took root, and in the course of five short years, turned "Alphabet City" (Avenues A, B, C, and D) from a place you didn't venture too long after midnight, into a real estate speculators wet dream, with ramshackle, condemned buildings being sold for 20 times what they were purchased in foreclosure two years before. And the rest is history. I was fortunate and made enough to stay in a neighborhood I loved, but one radically different from what it was when I moved from my folks. Income inequality is as much a part of NYC (in particular Manhattan and ever expanding parts of Brooklyn) as pizza and rats.

[@AllTheUrbanLegends]

Gini It's not really a great metric. You could have a median household income of $200,000, but if you have enough billionaires you're going to have a wild income inequality per the Gini coefficient. It wouldn't mean that there are poor people. It would just mean that there are enough rich people to skew the number. That's what you're seeing when you look at the US, San Francisco, New York, San Jose. The problem there is that both you have a bunch of billionaires, and you also have a ton of people with household incomes of 300 400 500k. The only reason that that sucks in those metro areas is because of the impact it has on housing values.