“The Oft-noted Hollowing Out of the Middle Class is a Metropolitan Phenomenon”

It used to be the case that there was greater income inequality in rural areas than in metropolitan ones. Big cities and surrounding communities typically had a substantial middle class. Rural areas, on the other hand, had limited economic opportunities, and the wealth of a few individuals—such as owners of local industries or large land holdings, were outliers in rural parts of the country who would drive measures of inequality.

As Michael Petrilli writes in the WSJ, this is no longer the case. Dramatic increases for high-wage workers are driving increases in income inequality in major cities, such that income inequality