Measured by income extremes, Virginia Beach is the most egalitarian large city in the country. Among households in 2012, the average income of the Top 5% was only six times that of the average income for the Bottom 20%. That compares to Atlanta, where the ratio was almost 19 to one, San Francisco, where the ratio was almost 17 to one.
In a recent paper, Brookings Institution scholar Alan Berube calculated the ratio for the 50 largest cities in the United States.
Berube observes that regions with great income disparities can be classified into two groups: cities like San Francisco where there are exceptionally high incomes (lots of wealth creation going on) and cities like Atlanta where there are exceptionally low incomes (little upward mobility).
Virginia Beach would appear to be an example of a city with modest extremes of wealth and poverty. In that sense, one could say it is the most middle class of all the nation’s largest cities. But there’s really not much to brag about here. Only a small portion of the “city” consists of urban core: the old resort area. Norfolk and Portsmouth were the urban centers of the south Hampton Roads region. Demographically, Virginia Beach is a middle-class suburb. The city owes its egalitarian distinction to the fact that Berube, not taking into account Virginia’s unique system of local government, was comparing apples to oranges.
Note: I have totally rewritten this post to correct a major misunderstanding in the original version.
— JAB