Income and Employment Income Disparities In recent years, researchers, service providers, and community members have become increasingly interested in income disparities and the ways that income inequality can impact economic mobility for future generations. The DC metropolitan area is considered to have relatively high upward mobility, which can be partially attributed to the region’s high level of racial diversity, lower levels of racial segregation, and a strong middle class.26 However, the District would likely see even more economic mobility if there were not such large income disparities present. One approach to looking at income inequality in the District is the 20/20 ratio, which compares the proportion of income accounted for by the lowest-income 20% with the share accounted for by the highest-income 20%. Using this ratio, DC exhibits an extremely elevated level of income inequality: the bottom fifth earns only 1.9% of total income, while the top fifth takes home 55.5% of the city’s income.27 Globally, income inequality is most commonly measured using a standard economic measure called the Gini index. A score of 0.0 on the Gini index would indicate perfect equality in the income distribution, whereas a score of 1.0 would indicate total inequality. The District continues to show higher income inequality than the nation as a whole. In 2019, the Gini index for the U.S. was 0.481, while the District of Columbia had a score of 0.512, the second highest of all states and territories, behind only Puerto Rico.28 It is important to note, however, that DC is not always comparable to other U.S. states and territories, which tend to have a much larger geographic area and different social, economic, and demographic characteristics from the District. When Washington, DC is considered alongside nine other large cities at the core of major metropolitan areas, the District’s Gini index falls right in the middle.29 Taken together, these two different measures of income inequality help to illustrate that while the District does have a large and growing gap between the highest and lowest income earners, there is also a sizeable middle class in DC, at least when compared to other major cities. The trend of income inequality is projected to continue, although the full impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic inequality in the District remain to be seen.
Employment and Unemployment One reason for such variance in income inequality is that the number of low-income earners is declining while the number of extremely high-income earners continues to increase. The disparity in income is made worse by employment and job sector trends that increasingly benefit workers in certain sectors, 26
Gregory, G. (2017, March 21). Income inequality and economic mobility in DC DC Policy Center. Retrieved September 8, 2021 from https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/income-inequality-and-economic-mobilityin-d-c/ 27 Ibid. 28 Guzman, G. (2020, September). Household income: 2019, American community survey briefs. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved September 7, 2021 from https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/acs/acsbr20-03.pdf 29 Gregory, G. (2017, March 21). Income inequality and economic mobility in DC DC Policy Center. Retrieved September 8, 2021 from https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/income-inequality-and-economic-mobilityin-d-c/
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