CED Winners and Losers in the Same Space: Income Inequality in North Carolina

<p>Community and economic development professionals are careful in monitoring the economic health of their communities. Economic growth is heralded; economic stress is cause for concern. One of the current issues in national public policy conversations is the growth in economic inequality, especially changes in household status across the whole economy, going beyond the traditional question of whether a location is doing well or poorly. Often the focus of the conversations is the distribution of income and/or its relative growth or decline. Income inequality is about how income is concentrated across the economic spectrum, and whether or not people are worse off or better than they were over time, relative to everyone else.</p> <p>In North Carolina – the answer is clear. The state has seen a shift in economic distribution of income over time. In 2005, those making $100,000 or more, in real terms, comprised 12.1 percent of the population, but that amount increased to 17.9 percent by 2014. As the figure below shows, a greater share of overall income is being captured by higher income earners, shown in light and dark blue.</p> Household Income Distribution (Adjusted for Inflation in NC) 2005-2013 <p>Source: author calculations based on data from US Census Bureau – American Fact Finder accessed January 5, 2015.</p> <p>An alternative perspective comes from the statistic called the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 represents perfect wealth equality, for example where everyone had the same level or share of wealth, and 1 represents total inequality, where only one person has all the wealth and [...]</p>