Inequality and city size: an analysis for OECD functional urban areas

Abstract

As cities grow, both the productivity of their inhabitants and the income distribution among them is expected to change. While the empirical literature has widely shown how productivity (and income) changes with city size, the empirical evidence on the effects on income inequality remains very limited. The few papers that study the relationship between city size and city-level inequality focus on a single country and do not provide international comparative evidence. In this paper, we study the relationship between city size and income inequality at city level for a sample of 153 Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) across 11 OECD countries