American Prices and Urban Inequality Since 1820

Abstract

This article examines the forces that appear to have driven long-term trends in American urban inequality. The changing structure of consumer goods' prices is shown to have played a significant—but not dominant—role in every phase of increasing and decreasing nominal inequality from 1820 to 1929. The revealed symmetry in movement between the urban price and income structure suggests that a successful macro-distribution model must explain both historical phenomena. Finally, the article concludes that technological imbalance was a crucial element in shaping peacetime patterns of income distribution.