Long abstract

About Statistics Publications & Documents Information by Country

The renewed interest in convergence/divergence raises issues about a particular type of disparity, that between rural and urban areas. One purpose of this paper is to examine rural-urban differences within a framework of overall regional inequality. The second purpose is to develop a better understanding of trends in regional inequality, using annual data from the U.S. in a case study. Our analysis covering 31 years suggests considerable real short-term variation in inequality, much of it along an urban-rural dimension. While there is considerable debate about whether there is regional convergence or divergence, our analysis suggests that the issue may be less whether there is regional convergence or divergence than when, and at what territorial level, one or the other occurs.