A recent study from researchers at the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis has found that strictly rich and poor neighborhoods are becoming more common in Florida, contributing to the disappearance of middle class neighborhoods.

Income Segregation Causes Inequality

The study found that in 1970, 15 percent of families lived in either rich or poor neighborhoods, while 65 percent lived in middle-income neighborhoods. By 2012, the number of families living in rich or poor neighborhoods had nearly doubled (34 percent), while the number of those living in middle-class neighborhoods had shrunk, falling to 40 percent.

“Rising income segregation will likely only further exacerbate the economic inequality that has produced it,” the authors of the study, Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, wrote.

Areas in the South have experienced the greatest increase in income segregation, specifically in Florida metro areas like Fort Myers (which topped the list of cities with the most income segregation), West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, according to the study. Income inequality is a key driver of income segregation, and as the family income distribution widens, it becomes less likely that lower-income families can afford to live in the same neighborhoods with those who have higher incomes, the study’s authors found.

Wealth Inequality Affects the Housing Market

The reason why segregation is so prominent in areas like Fort Myers and West Palm Beach is that segregation increases in areas where income inequality also increases, leading to a separation between the rich and the poor, with the middle class continuing to dwindle, according to the study. For example, Palm Beach County saw 11 percent of its population moving to a poor or affluent neighborhood between 2007 and 2012.

“In an era of very high income and wealth inequality, families have very different resources to spend on housing, and the housing market responds to this inequality in ways that exacerbate segregation,” Reardon and Bischoff wrote. “This self‐reinforcing cycle—where inequality begets segregation and segregation fosters inequality—will be hard to break.”

Policies that will help to reduce income segregation will involve increasing wages for low and middle income families, as well as making sure low income families are not concentrated in poor neighborhoods, the study found.