There are several ways to measure the growing U.S. wealth gap, but almost any way you look at it, the rich are getting richer.
Of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the Bridgeport, Connecticut metro area, which includes nearby Stamford and Norwalk, has the largest gap between rich and poor, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. In 2014 the gap in the Bridgeport area was $397,500 a year. San Jose ranks second.
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Bloomberg ranked cities on the difference between the top 20% of wage earners and the bottom 20%, in average household income. Other findings showed that the technology-fueled wealth gap in San Jose is expanding faster than the Wall Street-supported wealth gap in Connecticut’s toniest suburbs. The rich-to-poor gap increased by $40,700 in the Silicon Valley tech hub from 2008 to 2014. The five metro areas where the gap has widened the most since 2008, when it comes to the super rich versus the middle class, are San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston, and Albany.
Top Ten Metro Areas Ranked By Income Gap
- Bridgeport, CN
- San Jose, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Washington, D.C.
- Boston, MA
- New York, NY
- Oxnard, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Hartford, CN
- Houston, TX
In the 10 cities with the smallest income gap, the difference between rich and poor is growing more slowly than in the country as a whole, except in Lakeland, Fla., Winston-Salem, N.C., and Greensboro, N.C., where the gap has actually shrunk since 2008. The full report can be found here.