Locating geographies of inequality: publication trends across OECD countries

This paper examines journal publications and article citations on the subject of the spatial dimensions of income inequality within the social sciences. A systematic literature review methodology is used to develop a dataset containing 2944 articles published between 1980 and 2014. Analysis reveals that the number of papers soared in the late 1990s with significant differences (1) between papers focusing on the causes versus consequences of inequality; and (2) in the spatial scales studied. Increases in interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to understanding regional inequalities are also key features of the literature. Areas for future work on spatial inequality are outlined.