The Market

Manhattan has the biggest income gap between the rich and the poor

By BrickUnderground  | April 22, 2015 - 11:45AM
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That Manhattan has become land of the rich — you knew that already. But at a recent Symposium on Inequality at New York Law School, sociologist Andrew Beveridge, who's the co-founder of data site Social Explorer, revealed just how much: The borough now holds the distinction of being the "most unequal county" (of counties with more than 100,000 residents) in the country.

According to CityLab, Beveridge's findings has the top 20 percent of earners making 43 times what the bottom 20 percent does. One reason he cites? "An important part of the Manhattan story is Wall Street," Beveridge explains on Social Explorer. "Even when Wall Street was losing money during the financial crisis, bonus payments remained high."

Three days after the sociologist shared his data, news spread that an Upper West Side condo equipped with a so-called "poor door" — a separate entrance for residents in affordable housing units built as part of the project — garnered 88,000 applications, per the New York Times, for 55 available low-income apartments. 

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