Which Cities Gained, and Which Cities Lost in the 1990’s?

These regional differences are reflected in Table 2 on the following page, which shows city-suburb disparities in the Nation’s largest 50 metro areas based on the Mumford Disparity Index (MDI). The MDI is calculated by summing the standardized values of the eight indicators for cities and suburbs separately, equally weighting each component. The MDI is the difference between the cities’ and suburbs’ prosperity on these indicators. Table 2 ranks metropolitan areas from least to greatest disparity in overall economic health, and also shows how their ranking has changed since 1990. The table presents city and suburban median household income for 1990 and 2000 as a way of illustrating the patterns represented in the MDI.

The areas with the lowest city-suburb disparity are concentrated in the West and South. Las Vegas, NV has the lowest disparity, followed by San Diego, CA and Seattle, WA. In contrast, areas with the greatest disparity are concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest: Newark, NJ (#50), Hartford, CT (#49), and Detroit, MI (#48).

Table 2 reveals some striking shifts during the 1990’s. Although in some places the cities improved, in most metro regions the city-suburb economic gap got significantly worse since 1990.