The Geographic Redistribution of Income in the United States, 1969–2019: Examining the Role of Federal Policy

Abstract

Prior research on regional differences in income levels has focused almost exclusively on market mechanisms that affect wages. This article argues that federal policy has had significant effects on changes in regional income inequality, and that these effects have rarely been analyzed. Since 1969, an increase in transfer payments and financial deregulation have increased the share of national income going to transfers and financial income. To show how these changes played out spatially, this article offers a decomposition of the difference in income growth between ten of the fastest-growing metropolitan regions and the United States as a whole, for the period 1969–2019. In most of the regions with the fastest income growth, financial and transfer income account for most of the difference in income growth rates between region and nation. Literature on regional income inequality would benefit from paying more attention to unearned income, and from engaging more fully with literature on financialization.