Today the Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C.,-based think tank, released findings from a study on income inequality. It examined 2012 and 2013 Census Bureau data from the 50 largest U.S. cities, Milwaukee included, and found that there is rising inequality in some of the country’s largest cities, but in Milwaukee inequality has declined slightly. In fact, Milwaukee was one of only four cities where this kind of inequality fell.
The study compares incomes in the 95th percentile, meaning “those earning more than 95 percent of all other households,” with the 20th percentile, or those earning more than only 20 percent of all other households.
Milwaukee’s decline in inequality, the study purports, can be attributed to a slight rise in incomes for those in the 20th percentile. From 2012 to 2013, the income of those in that 20th percentile increased by 8.9 percent from $13,461 to $14,654. This meant the city’s inequality ratio, which compares the 95th and 20th percentiles, declined by 0.8. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the incomes of the city’s high earners were bested by those in 47 other states. San Francisco’s 95th percentile made far more than any other city at $423,000, especially compared to Milwaukee’s 95th percentile, which earned roughly $135,000.
The city’s decline in income inequality varies from a previous Brookings study, which examined income data from 2007-2012 and, using the same income ratio, found that Milwaukee was one of those top six cities for income inequality along with San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, Sacramento and Jacksonville, Fla. During that period, the income inequality ratio in Milwaukee grew by two points.
Around the same time last year, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Employment and Training Institute used 2012 tax filings to calculate income inequality in Milwaukee County. They found that the county’s highest earning working families made more than 12 times what its poorest working families did.
