Surviving the Great Recession: the influence of income inequality in US urban counties

A quantitative method for measuring regional economic resilience to the great recession

“…Other efforts measure economic resilience by analyzing the behavior of an economic statistic representing economic activity such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), personal income, and employment to observe the shock response (Davies, ; Fingleton et al, ; Han & Goetz, ; Hill et al ; Martin, ). For example, Augustine et al (2013), Fingleton et al (), Han and Goetz (), and Martin () study regional economic resilience using employment data, while Davies () uses unemployment data and Lewin, Watson, and Brown () use personal income. Some of these studies also correlate an indicator of regional resilience with some indicators of regional strength.…”

“…Crespo, Suire and Vicente () use local knowledge network structure to explain regional resilience. Lewin et al () use income inequality and other county economic drivers to explain resilience (or the probability of entering recession). Our measure of regional economic resilience, following the approach taken by Fingleton et al (), Martin (), and Han and Goetz (), is aimed solely to quantify regional response to shocks.…”

The Role of Initial Conditions in Post-Great Recession Recovery and Development: Single-County MSAs

“…The U.S. economy has been in recovery since mid-2009, but the recovery has been uneven across regions and social groups (Bennett, Yuen, & Blanco-Silva, 2018; Kim & Warner 2018; Lewin, Watson, & Brown, 2018; Partridge & Tsvetkova, 2017). By 2016, the last year included in this study, national unemployment had decreased to 4.9%.…”

“…Berger and Frey (2017) looked at the emergence of new industries and found that they emerge in cities rich in human capital and other industries using similar skills. Lewin et al (2018) found income distribution to have been a factor in the resilience of urban counties in the United States during the Great Recession. Their results suggested that greater “income inequality increases a region’s risk or vulnerability to a recession shock” (Lewin et al, 2018, p. 790).…”

“…Lewin et al (2018) found income distribution to have been a factor in the resilience of urban counties in the United States during the Great Recession. Their results suggested that greater “income inequality increases a region’s risk or vulnerability to a recession shock” (Lewin et al, 2018, p. 790). They did not study inequality’s effect on postrecession performance.…”