Insee Analyses · January 2023 · n° 79

In 15 years, disparities between neighborhoods, measured by income, increased in most large cities

Measured by income, the degree of spatial segregation within a city is correlated neither with the size nor the density of its population. Nevertheless, large cities with the highest degrees of segregation, that is where people with similar incomes live in the same neighborhoods, share some common characteristics: on the one hand, income gaps between the poorest and the most affluent are the most pronounced, and on the other hand, poor households have especially low incomes.

Whatever the segregation level of the cities, the poorest and most affluent populations live in less mixed neighborhoods than those with intermediate incomes.

Between 2004 and 2019, spatial disparities by income increased in most of the large cities: all income groups lived in increasingly segregated neighborhoods, with the notable exception of the lowest income populations.