Differences in Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan U.S. Family Income Inequality: A Cross-County Comparison

U.S. family income inequality is examined using 1990 Cenus of Population data for the 3109 counties and independent cities in the 48 contiguous states. Use of counties as the unit of analysis extends previous research on U.S. income inequality that relied on national, state, or metropolitan level data. In addition, including both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties allows us to determine whether income inequality differs between them after controlling for a variety of labor market, demographic, and regional characteristics. As another innovation, we also consider whether counties that experienced recent structural changes in industry composition have higher income inequality.