Washington: In the 1950's Baltimore was the sixth largest city in the United States with a peak population of nearly 950,000. Now the riot-hit metropolis ranks 26th on that measure and scores as one of the less equal American cities when measured by income and educational achievement.
Despite an economic recovery in the majority black East Coast city since the financial crisis, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wide in a population that now numbers about 620,000.
In Baltimore, a household in the top 5 per cent of income earners received $12.30 for each dollar earned by those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2013, according to a 2014 analysis by Alan Berube and Natalie Holmes of the Brookings Institution, based on census data. By comparison, across the whole of the US, the top take in $9.30 for every dollar earned at the bottom.
Among 50 major US cities, Baltimore ranked No. 12 in the inequality reading. Atlanta - which was one of the American cities hit hardest by the housing bust - was the most unequal, according to the Brookings study that covered 2007-2013.
The economic divide may have provided some of the tinder that led to looting and arson in the city on Monday night after the funeral for a 25-year-old black man who died on April 19 from a serious spinal cord injury, a week after he was arrested by police.
Growing income inequality has emerged as a key theme ahead of the 2016 presidential election with both Democrats and Republicans calling for the issue to be addressed. President Barack Obama has termed income inequality and the inability to move up the ladder as "the defining challenge of our time".
LACK OF MOBILITY
In a paper published last year, Raj Chetty of Harvard University and his co-authors found the Baltimore area ranked near the bottom of major U.S. cities in terms of mobility.
According to the study, someone born into the bottom fifth of the population in Baltimore stood 6.4 percent chance of making it to the top one fifth of the income strata. That compared with an 11 percent chance in Washington, D.C.
Baltimore's economy has ticked up - traffic is rising at its port, which handles a lot of trade in automobiles among other things - and the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.4 percent in February, down about four percentage points over the past five years.
The city's population has started to stabilise in the last few years, following decades of white flight into the suburbs and a declining industrial base.
But for those who live in one of the areas where people clashed with police on Monday - the Sandtown-Winchester area of Baltimore with the 21217 zipcode - about one third of the people live in poverty, according to census data.
Across the city as a whole, the poverty rate is 24 percent.
A married couple with two children is currently classified by the federal government as impoverished if they earn less than $24,000 a year.
In Baltimore, African Americans make up about two-thirds of the city, one of the largest black populations in absolute and relative terms in cities in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of people in Sandtown-Winchester are black.
Of the zip code's residents older than 24, about 57 percent have not advanced beyond a high school education, 15 percentage points above the national average, according to census data. A third of the homes there are vacant.
By contrast, in the Roland Park 21210 zipcode on the more affluent north side of the city, the poverty rate is 10.2 percent. That zipcode is 80 percent white and more than 90 percent of people older than 24 have attended at least some college.
Despite an economic recovery in the majority black East Coast city since the financial crisis, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wide in a population that now numbers about 620,000.
In Baltimore, a household in the top 5 per cent of income earners received $12.30 for each dollar earned by those in the bottom 20 per cent in 2013, according to a 2014 analysis by Alan Berube and Natalie Holmes of the Brookings Institution, based on census data. By comparison, across the whole of the US, the top take in $9.30 for every dollar earned at the bottom.
The economic divide may have provided some of the tinder that led to looting and arson in the city on Monday night after the funeral for a 25-year-old black man who died on April 19 from a serious spinal cord injury, a week after he was arrested by police.
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LACK OF MOBILITY
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According to the study, someone born into the bottom fifth of the population in Baltimore stood 6.4 percent chance of making it to the top one fifth of the income strata. That compared with an 11 percent chance in Washington, D.C.
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The city's population has started to stabilise in the last few years, following decades of white flight into the suburbs and a declining industrial base.
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Across the city as a whole, the poverty rate is 24 percent.
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In Baltimore, African Americans make up about two-thirds of the city, one of the largest black populations in absolute and relative terms in cities in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of people in Sandtown-Winchester are black.
Of the zip code's residents older than 24, about 57 percent have not advanced beyond a high school education, 15 percentage points above the national average, according to census data. A third of the homes there are vacant.
By contrast, in the Roland Park 21210 zipcode on the more affluent north side of the city, the poverty rate is 10.2 percent. That zipcode is 80 percent white and more than 90 percent of people older than 24 have attended at least some college.
© Thomson Reuters 2015
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