Improvements

1. The greatest improvement was in Miami, Fl, ranked #39 in 1990 and #32 in 2000. Miami’s suburbs actually experienced a decline in median income, while the city - though still far behind - saw incomes grow.
   
   
2. San Francisco, CA, ranked #32 in city-suburb disparity in 1990, climbed to #17 in 2000. The suburban income gain of 15% in this metro area was far above the national average, but median income in the City of San Francisco jumped by more than 25%.
   
   
3. Chicago, IL moved up from #45 to #40. Median income in the city rose 13%, compared to only 10% in the suburbs.
   
   
4. In the Seattle, WA metro area the central city has nearly reached parity with the suburbs on the overall Mumford Disparity Index. It still lags the suburbs on median income, but the city’s median income rose from .79 to .85 as high as the suburbs.
   
   
5. Las Vegas, NV is an example of a metro area where the city was on a par with suburbs in 1990, but has now moved ahead of them on the MDI. In terms of median income, as shown in Table 2, the city was already outperforming the suburbs in 1990.
   
   

Falling Farther Behind

1. Among the top 50 largest metro regions, Phoenix, AZ had the smallest city-suburb disparity in 1990, but by 2000 this disparity had increased significantly, dropping the region to #7. The city’s median income was equal to that of suburbs in 1990, but only .91 as high in 2000.
   
   
2. The biggest loss occurred in Newark, NJ - already the place with the greatest disparity in 1990. Newark’s gap grew at a faster rate than any other top-50 metro. Median income stayed about the same in the suburbs, but dropped by more than 10% in the city.
   
   
3. The next largest loss took place in Sacramento, CA, which fell from #12 to #21 on the list. Here the suburbs prospered while the city’s median income actually fell.
   
   
4. Although most metro regions across Texas experienced huge gains in economic prosperity during the last decade, city-suburb disparities also grew in several of them: Austin, TX, dropped from #14 to #18, Houston from #25 to #31, and Dallas from #23 to #35.