NYC Income Inequality Hasn't Budged Under De Blasio, Report Shows

NEW YORK — The tale of two cities is still being written. Income inequality in New York City has not budged under Mayor Bill de Blasio despite his emphatic pledges to tackle the problem, a new report says.

Income inequality remained "essentially flat" in 2017 as measured by the Gini coefficient, an inequality metric used by the U.S. Census Bureau, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

That indicates de Blasio has made little progress toward narrowing the divide between the city's rich and poor, which he pledged to take "dead aim" at when he took office. That's one of several ways in which the mayor has produced middling results in his six-year tenure despite huge growth in the city's budget, the report charges.

"The revolution that was promised during the election to end the 'Tale of Two Cities' never came," Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Alex Armlovich writes in the report, adding that the city is "treading water amid massive spending increases."

New York City's Gini coefficient stood at 0.5504 in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the report says. The number measures how far a society's income is from being equally distributed. A coefficient of zero indicates a perfectly equal distribution while a coefficient of 1 means a single person has all the money.

The city's number is actually up slightly since de Blasio took office, but the "key point is that income inequality has not declined," Armlovich writes.

That's not for lack of trying — de Blasio has implemented programs aimed at helping the poor while advocating for increased taxes on the rich, such as a "millionaire's tax" to fund public transit. But he lacks the power to raise those taxes himself, and the state Legislature has not been eager to do so for him.

De Blasio has nonetheless carried the mantle of anti-inequality crusader into his longshot presidential campaign. While he has dropped the "Tale of Two Cities" tagline, his 2020 campaign website says he is "building an economy that puts working families first."

City Hall took issue with the Manhattan Institute's analysis, arguing that it ignores the reduction in the city's poverty rate under de Blasio.

City data has shown that there were about 236,500 fewer poor New Yorkers in 2017 than in 2013 as the city's poverty rate fell to a pre-recession level. The Gini coefficient, by contrast, moves very slowly and failes to capture those gains, the mayor's office argues.

De Blasio spokesperson Laura Feyer said the mayor's administration has "put more money back in the hands of working people," pointing to his universal pre-kindergarten intiative, affordable housing plan, and the city's paid sick leave policy.

"Since the beginning of this Administration, we have focused on improving the lives of the most vulnerable New Yorkers," Feyer said in a statement. "Not only have 236,500 New Yorkers moved out of poverty or near-poverty, we have raised the floor for everyone with our investment in working New Yorkers."