Housing Inequality the Leading Cause of Wealth Inequality

Mathew Leger provides insight into the widening wealth gap in the United States, with recent research connecting housing inequality to wealth inequality.

As Leger notes, past research has usually listed the following factors as the primary drivers of wealth inequality: 

1. Declining tax progressivity
2. Technological advances
3. Decline in union membership
4. Decline in real value of the minimum wage, and
5. Globalization

Recent studies by researchers at MIT, the University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan, however, "suggest that housing inequality is the leading cause of wealth inequality," according to Leger.

Further supplementing that point, Leger also shares word of a mapping project called "Mapping Prejudice," which visualizes the spread of racial covenants (i.e., property deeds excluding racial minorities from owning or occupying property) and redlining around Minneapolis during the 20 century.

Leger concludes by raising the possibility, and ongoing, question of whether the highly lauded Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan could achieve its ambitions of overcoming the racist history of property rights discrimination in the city.