Changing patterns of inequality in a global sample of cities

Abstract Urban inequality is widely debated but a lack of data makes it challenging to examine developments over time and across cities. In this contribution, we examine trends in inequality from the 1980s onwards in a sample of 86 cities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. We track trends in three domains: the labor market, education, and assets (including private goods and public amenities). With descriptive statistics, data visualization, and logistic regression analysis, we show that while inequality in educational attainment is decreasing across all cities in our sample, patterns in the other two domains are more complex. Even though the middle occupational groups is growing in the majority of cities in our sample, there are important exceptions and substantial regional variations. While we find that inequality in terms of assets more often decreased than increased, class position continues to predict access to private goods and public amenities. Although the observed patterns are complex, we find no proof of escalating inequalities in the three domains under study.