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DC’s Top Earners Take Home 13 Times More Than Lowest Earners

  • February 20, 2014

by Lark Turner

DC's Top Earners Take Home 13 Times More Than Lowest Earners: Figure 1

DC’s biggest earners take home more than 13 times what its lowest earners make, a Brookings Institute study released on Thursday found.

The city ranked fifth among cities with the biggest salary gap between the top 5 percent of earners and the bottom 20 percent. Atlanta topped the list.

DC's Top Earners Take Home 13 Times More Than Lowest Earners: Figure 2

In its report, Brookings noted that while cities with lower income inequality tended to share certain traits — most were in the South or West, for example, and typically either incorporated suburban areas or were basically very large suburbs — the same couldn’t be said of the cities with high income inequality.

“San Francisco’s ratio is high because its wealthy households have very high incomes, considerably higher than in any other major city,” the report states. “Miami’s ratio is high primarily because its poor households have very low incomes, third-lowest among the 50 largest cities.”

Broadly, though, bigger cities took the lion’s share of nationwide inequality. Here’s a graph showing that trend:

DC's Top Earners Take Home 13 Times More Than Lowest Earners: Figure 3

To no one’s surprise, the report noted that income inequality was likely to be a big factor in upcoming mayoral elections, including those here in Washington.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dcs_top_earners_take_home_13_times_more_than_lowest/8148

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