In this article, we examine the link between innovation and earnings inequality across Canadian cities over the 1996-2006 period. We do so using a novel data set that combines information from the Canadian long-form census and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The analysis reveals that there is a positive relationship between innovation and inequality: cities with higher levels of innovation have more unequal distributions of earnings. Other factors influencing differences in inequality include city size, manufacturing and government employment, the percentage of visible minority in an urban population, and educational inequality. These results are robust to the use of different measures of inequality, innovation, alternative specifications, and instrumental variables estimations. Questions are thus raised about how the benefits of innovation are distributed in society and the long-term sustainability of such trends. 351ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 90(4):351-373.

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This paper investigates changes in the distribution of earnings across 87 metropolitan areas in Canada. It does so using micro data taken from the 20 per cent long-form sample of the census for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006. Results point to overall increases in urban inequality and to greater heterogeneity in inequality across the urban hierarchy, with larger cities growing particularly unequal over time. Cross-sectional and panel regression models suggest that city size, unemployment, deindustrialisation and the percentage of a city’s population composed of visible minorities contribute to increased inequality. In contrast, a city’s level of economic development has a mitigating effect on inequality, although this effect appears to fade away over time. The effects of changes in a city’s age, education and gender profiles on inequality are mixed.

This paper examines journal publications and article citations on the subject of the spatial dimensions of income inequality within the social sciences. A systematic literature review methodology is used to develop a dataset containing 2,944 articles published from 1980 to 2014. Analysis reveals that the number of papers soared in the late 1990s with significant differences (i) between papers focusing on the causes vs. consequences of inequality and (ii) in the spatial scales studied. Increases in interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to understanding regional inequalities are also key features of the literature. Areas for future work on spatial inequality are outlined.

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