Inequality and the Safety Net in American Cities throughout the Income Distribution, 1929-1940, ,This chapter is a preliminary draft unless otherwise noted. It may not have been subjected to the formal review process of the NBER. This page will be updated as the chapter is revised.
Chapter in forthcoming NBER book Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth, Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Janet C. Gornick, Barry Johnson, and Arthur Kennickell, editors We compare three measures of inequality in cities across the United States before and during the Great Depression: gini coefficients for income in 1929 and 1933; gini coefficients for housing values in 1930, 1934, and 1940; and the share of families paying federal income taxes. Both levels and changes in housing and income ginis were strongly correlated in 1929/30 and 1933/34. However, the changes in the income gini implied increases in inequality in nearly every sample city between 1929 and 1933 while the changes in the housing gini did not. Incomes tended to become more unequal in cities located in states where income per capita fell the most. Among safety net programs, cities increased their relief spending more in areas with rising inequality. Among New Deal housing programs, the HOLC and the FHA were associated with slight increases in inequality, while the average housing values in most parts of the housing distribution rose more in areas with more FHA insurance of mortgages. This paper is available as PDF (401 K) or via email
Acknowledgments and Disclosures Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX This chapter first appeared as NBER working paper w27069, Inequality and the Safety Net Throughout the Income Distribution, 1929-1940, James J. Feigenbaum, Price V. Fishback, Keoka Grayson |
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