"What drags down our entire economy is when there is an ultra-wide chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else," President Barack Obama, April 2012.
Intentionally or not, President Obama recently staked a claim in the debate about the relationship between income inequality and economic growth. Although there's no strong consensus among economists on this topic,cross-national research finds that, in general, countries with higher levels of inequality generally tend to have lower rates of growth. But that finding has to be taken with a grain of salt because the understanding that the relationship between inequality and growth tend to vary with a country's stage of economic development. High inequality is associated with lower growth in developing economies but with higher growth in mature economies.
Read our latest MetroTrends commentary to see what the picture look like for the Top 100 metro areas.
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