By at least one measure, gentrification is most pronounced in neighborhoods on the East and West Coast. It’s probably just not the neighborhoods you’d expect. A Social Explorer analysis of 2010-14 and 2014-18 American Community Survey found that the Gini index – a 0 to 1 measure of inequality, where 0 means all wealth is evenly distributed – has climbed the most in a downtown Los Angeles Census tract; an economically battered New York town on the St. Lawrence River boundary with Canada; and a Puget Sound tract that’s adjacent to a U.S. Navy base.

The Gini climbed from 0.11 in 2014 to 0.68 in 2018 in the Los Angeles County tract, the highest jump of any neighborhood in the U.S. It was followed by a St. Lawrence County neighborhood (a 0.55 increase to 0.65) and a Kitsap County tract (a 0.5 increase to 0.59). 

Check out Social Explorer’s mapping tools to measure the changes in income inequality in your neighborhood.

Gini Index in 2014-2018. Click here to explore further.

Author: Frank Bass