One need only glance at the headlines about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other ultra-rich people to understand that America's wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Inequality has increased dramatically.

However, so far, little is known about where the wealthiest households are located, which cities are the most unequal, and how these trends are evolving.

In a new analysis I conducted with colleagues, we reveal where wealth is most concentrated within and across communities, cities, and states. The result is GEOWEALTH-US—the first data to track the distribution of wealth in the United States and how it has changed since 1960.

The overall picture is worrying. The wealthiest cities in the United States are now nearly seven times as wealthy as the poorest areas, a gap that has nearly doubled since 1960. At the same time, wealth has become highly concentrated in the hands of a few, especially in coastal urban areas. The picture of the geography of wealth shows that we are more divided than we thought.

Graph inequality

To measure local wealth, we applied sophisticated machine learning techniques to data from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances to build an accurate model of household wealth.

We then use these models to estimate household wealth from the decennial census and the American Community Survey, which allow us to determine where people live.

Experts define wealth as the difference between the value of a home's assets (such as cash, real estate and stocks) and its liabilities (including mortgages, student loans and credit card debt). Wealth is also known as "net worth."

Using GEOWEALTH-US, we find that the distribution of wealth across the United States has changed since 1960. Inequality between America's prosperous urban centers and the rest of the country, especially parts of the South and Midwest, is higher than ever. the past 60 years.

Rising wealth inequality is a challenge to the American Dream: the idea that through hard work, opportunity and prosperity are available to everyone.

Wealth brings choice and stability. Poor families have more difficulty providing the best nutrition and education for their children. Additionally, people who grow up in low-wealth households are less likely to stimulate innovation in a field or launch successful new businesses. Wealth also profoundly affects a person's health, making the least well-off in our society more susceptible to premature death and disability.

The gap between rich and poor in various places is large

We analyzed average household wealth in the United States from 1960 to 2022 using Census-defined communities of approximately 100,000 residents.

At the community level, a lack of wealth can have a significant impact on the services a city provides to its residents.

People who grow up in wealthy areas can reap benefits that are passed down from generation to generation. Thanks to property taxes and philanthropy, wealthier communities have more resources for schools, health care, transportation and other infrastructure.

Research shows that good schools are one of the benefits of wealthy neighborhoods and can improve social mobility even for children born into poverty.

The 2022 map reveals key differences in typical (median) net worth across neighborhoods. Many of the least affluent areas are located in poor neighborhoods in some of America's largest cities, such as parts of the Bronx and East Harlem in New York, and areas of Houston and Milwaukee. A typical household in the five poorest neighborhoods has assets worth about $18,000. Many households in these areas hold more debt than assets. Other poor areas of the country include parts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Today's most affluent communities tend to be located in urban coastal areas.

Palo Alto, California, and Nassau County, New York, are two of the five wealthiest areas in the United States. The median household net worth in the top five areas is nearly $1.7 million. That's almost 90 times richer than the five poorest places.

These wealth disparities help explain why between 2019 and 2021, California’s Palo Alto Unified School District spent about $100 more per student than the minimum required to meet national benchmark test scores, according to the School Finance Indicators Database $7,000. Meanwhile, the East Baton Rouge School District spends nearly $4,000 less per student than it would to meet the same state standards. Cincinnati Public Schools spends less than $9,000 per student.

The gap between rich and poor in the region is huge

We also looked at wealth disparities in cities and neighborhoods. The average level of wealth in a community matters, but so does uneven distribution.

Inequality, especially when a community is racially diverse and spatially segregated, is associated with underinvestment in public goods such as schools, roads, and hospitals.

Our research found significant wealth disparities within communities.

For example, in some areas of California, such as San Jose and Santa Monica, we found that the richest 10% of residents have approximately seven times the wealth of the median household. By comparison, in many areas of Utah and Minnesota, the top 10 percent of households have only about three times the wealth of the median household.

As a result, coastal areas are not only wealthier than the rest of the country; Wealth is also less equally distributed in these places.

We also found that wealth is unevenly distributed in many parts of the South. This reflects generations of legacies of slavery, discrimination and uneven economic development.

Regardless of geography, we found that across the United States, the most unequal places are likely to have more African Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color. In these areas, white households are disproportionately represented among the wealthiest households. At the same time, households of color generally have much lower net worth.

The wealth landscape is changing

Extensive testing shows that our model can estimate wealth with a high degree of accuracy. By mapping household wealth rather than household income (which researchers more commonly use to assess economic well-being), we found that the divide based on place is much deeper than previously thought.

Our data shows that since 1960, wealth gaps between regions have grown much faster than income gaps. By 2020, the average wealth level gap was about 60% higher than the same income gap.

This appears to be driven by changing economic fortunes of cities.

Average wealth levels rose significantly in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, New York and Boston as these areas solidified their leadership in high-tech and finance.

At the same time, the loss of manufacturing jobs has destroyed the wealth of many American communities. In 1960, the industrial center of Cleveland, Ohio, had one of the highest levels of average household wealth in the nation, according to our data. In 2020, Cleveland ranked 466th out of 722 areas we studied.

Within cities, we also observe rising wealth concentration. In the Minneapolis metropolitan area, for example, the share of total wealth held by the top 0.1% of households has nearly tripled, from about 3% in 1960 to nearly 9% in 2020. This means that only fewer households now own a larger piece of the pie than in the past.

The ladder of success is getting harder to climb

Several factors explain the growing concentration of wealth. These include the increasing concentration of high-paying jobs in major metropolitan areas and the explosive growth in housing values ​​in these high-performing cities.

Changing federal tax policies also benefit the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans.

If the next Trump administration continues to pursue such policies, wealth distribution is likely to get worse — with significant consequences for American democracy.