According to Bloomberg, Miami is now the most unequal city in the United States, having leapfrogged five ranks in just a year to reach the top. Yay! We have greater income disparity than anybody!
Bloomberg ordered large cities – those with populations of at least 250,000 – based on the Gini coefficient. The index measures the distribution of household income using 2015 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The ratio ranges from zero, which reflects absolute equality, to one, complete inequality. Miami took the top spot in 2016 with a coefficient of .58, followed by Atlanta and New Orleans.
Here’s how the numbers break down:
From 2014 to 2015, income disparity in Miami grew a whopping 16.8 percent, looking at the difference between the top 5 percent and the lowest 20 percent of wages. That was a huge jump for a single year, taken in context: over a seven-year span, from 2007 to 2014, the same divide grew 17.6 percent.
Given the nature of my adopted hometown, this finding is more likely to be seen by many of my neighbors as a point of civic pride than considered the shameful statistic it truly is. After all, Miami also ranks 15th among the top 20 poorest cities in the U.S.
