This table-laden report on economic inequality from the Economic Policy Institute is very heavy on data but, sadly, at least from my viewpoint lacking in information. It doesn’t answer the questions to which I most want to know the answers. These are, first, how unequal is the city of Chicago? Not the Chicago metropolitan area or Cook County. The city of Chicago. The reason for that is that policy isn’t made across the entire metropolitan area. It’s made city by city and county by county.
The second is what are the sources of income inequality? Unless the source is geographic you won’t find your answer in this report. You’ll have to ferret out the data metropolitan area by metropolitan area or county by county which means you might as well have written your own report.
There’s a clue in this caption in the report: “Inequality back at levels not seen since the late 1920s”. You know what else is back at levels not seen since the late 1920s? The percentage of immigrants. Whether you think that immigration is good, bad, or some of each, I think there’s one thing you’ve got to acknowledge: an immigrant who arrives here with nothing, doesn’t have much in the way of marketable skills, and may have little or no command of the English language is not likely to earn as much as a native born native speaker of English with a professional degree. And the largest number of immigrants fit that description. Skilled workers may be counted in the hundreds of thousands but unskilled workers are counted in the tens of millions. That’s going to have an impact on income inequality.
There are some other deficiencies in the report. The data are not presented in a heat map but in tabular form which, like a fan dancer’s fan, conceals as much as it reveals. It compares averages to averages which I think is methodologically suspect. It includes no medians or standard deviations. The results for counties or metropolitan areas are not weighted by population. Demographic information is not included.
If you’re looking for the information you need to decide on the best policy for dealing with income inequality, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for the ammo you need for political agitation, this report is for you.
