This workshop will feature three expert speakers who will cover the latest developments in measuring and interpreting urban and regional inequality. Topics covered: 1) the spatial dimension of measuring inequality; 2) linking inter-personal and inter-regional inequality; and 3) communicating findings effectively and translating them into policy implications. The audience will have ample opportunity to speak with the experts about future avenues of measuring spatial inequality beyond income.
- Territorial | Urban | Rural | Local and regional | EU/ European | International | Cohesion | Social inclusion and Equality | Migration | Jobs and Employment
- Code: 10WS2399
- SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre, Room 213-215
Speakers
Moderator
Pasquale D'Apice
Practical information
- When
-
Tue 10/10/2023, 09:30 - 10:30 CET
- Where
-
SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre, Room 213-215
- Format
- Workshop
- Theme
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Regions in post-industrial transition
- Language
- English
- Social media
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@OECD_local
@oecd-local
@OECDSMEsRegionsandCities
Reporting
Session summary
The level of inequality can vary significantly across countries, across regions of the same country and across time, even in high-income countries. Studying these variations in detail has become possible only very recently, due to advancements in data availability.
The first presentation outlined methodological challenges in measuring inequality within countries, highlighting trade-offs between scope, availability, and comparability in existing measures. While indicators built from aggregated data such as GDP per capita are comprehensive, internationally comparable and available for longer time lags, they focus on mean levels that may be removed from experienced levels of inequality, and are aggregated by large pre-defined areas. Indicators based on individual or household data, on the other hand, are informative about different parts of the income distribution and offer more flexibility for spatial aggregations, but are usually not available for long time lags, require more resources to process and are difficult to compare across countries. The presentation stressed the need to also advance in the measurement of cost of living, wellbeing, lifetime and inter-generational outcomes differences within and across places, and to provide clarity on the drivers behind increasing inequality trends.
The next two speakers showed new results from research that used bottom-up indicators to uncover how spatial inequality has evolved since the 1980s.
Wages in the United States are much more unequal than in European countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the spatial variation in wages has increased since the 1980s in all these countries. Most of the increase came from the top 10% highest earners, who have become more spatially dispersed, while the bottom earners have remained similarly dispersed. It should be noted, however, that 1) these calculations only include wages and do not take into account differences in the local cost of living, and 2) that place explains a relatively small share of the variation in wages -- most inequality comes from differences in wages within the same place rather than across places in the same country.
Despite this increase in spatial inequality, intergenerational mobility has improved in all European countries in the past decades, especially for women. Today, in Europe, the level of education and income of someone’s family has a smaller effect on their current levels of income and education than in the 1980s. However, in all countries where data are available (Italy, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands), the most unequal regions also tend to be the ones with the lowest intergenerational mobility.
