Abstract
AbstractIncome inequality in the United States has been growing since the 1980s and is particularly noticeable in large urban areas like the Chicago metro region. While not as high as New York or Los Angeles, the Gini Coefficient for the Chicago metro area (.48) was the same as the United States in 2015 but rising at a faster rate, suggesting it will surpass the US national level in 2020. This chapter examines the Chicago region’s growing income inequality since 1980 using US Census data collected in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015, focusing on where people live based on occupation as well as income. When mapped out, the data shows a city and region that is becoming more segregated by occupation and income as it becomes both richer and poorer. A result is a shrinking number of middle-class and mixed neighbourhoods. The resulting patterns of socioeconomic spatial segregation also align with patterns of racial/ethnic segregation attributed to historical housing development and market segmentation, as well as recent efforts to advance Chicago as a global city through tourism and real estate development.
Highlights
In the United States, changes in the relative size and wages of different occupational groups are central to understanding socioeconomic segregation (Mouw and Kalleberg 2010)
These results suggest two trends in the Chicago region
An occupational shift is ‘shrinking the middle’ while increasing the number of people in the bottom and top occupational groups. This is consistent with the global city literature on the social polarization of the workforce
Summary
In the United States, changes in the relative size and wages of different occupational groups (i.e., occupational structure) are central to understanding socioeconomic segregation (Mouw and Kalleberg 2010). The region is an interesting case given Chicago’s industrial history and its evolution to become a post-industrial global city, growing as a ‘command and control’ centre for finance and banking as well as the commodities market (Abu-Lughod 2000). It has not been a straight path to social polarization as Sassen (1991) would predict, and likely because, as Hamnett (1994) might suggest: Chicago’s economic trendlines did not align with Los Angeles and New York in the 1970s and 1980s. The city ‘incentivized’ private investment through tax-increment financing and other tax breaks This includes the addition of more than 40,000 new units of higher-end housing since 2010 (about 3% of the total housing stock), with more than half in the city centre and nearby neighbourhoods (Realpage.com 2018).
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