Madrid leads income inequality in Spain according to the Fedea report

Madrid and several of the large municipalities in its suburbs lead the classifications of income inequality among its inhabitants, far from other large urban concentrations such as Barcelona and its surroundings, which place several of its cities among those with the greatest equality between incomes.

These findings are part of a work published this Monday by Fedea with data from 2023, which also collects information on income and inequality of some 1,200 municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants and another 145 with more than 50,000 inhabitants. There is also an analysis of the ten largest cities.

Another conclusion is that two cities in the province of Barcelona, ​​Sant Cugat del Vallès and Vilanova i la Geltrú, were the ones that increased their income the most in 2023, 6.2% and 5.8%, respectively. Only the Canarian town of San Bartolomé de Tirajana surpasses them, with an increase of 8%.

When analyzing the inequality of the ten largest cities in Spain, the Fedea report does not show a correlation with size, despite Madrid occupying the first position. The capital has a Gini index of 0.543, followed by three not so large cities: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (0.54), Murcia (0.538) and Málaga (0.538). Barcelona occupies seventh position, ahead of Seville, Palma de Mallorca and Zaragoza, with a Gini index in the latter case of 0.4696.

The Gini index used by Fedea is the most used indicator to measure inequality. A value of zero implies a similar distribution of income among all individuals and of one, at maximum inequality, in which a single person would obtain all the income. As a reference, a variation of two hundredths is equivalent to a distribution of 7% of income from the poorest sector to the richest.

The Fedea report shows that, of the ten municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants with the greatest inequality in Spain, two from Madrid top the classification, Pozuelo de Alarcón and Alcobendas. On the other hand, among those with the lowest inequality are, in this order, Sant Boi de Llobregat (0.3717), Cornellà de Llobregat (0.3930), Cerdanyola del Vallès (0.3959), Aranjuez (0.4027) and Granollers (0.4029).

The largest increases in the Gini index were recorded in the Madrid municipalities of Tres Cantos, 51.17%, and Colmenar Viejo, 42.01%, followed by the Barcelona municipalities of Vilanova i la Geltrú, 27.58%, and the Malaga-based Rincón de la Victoria, 23.26%. The report includes these developments without going into the causes.

Among the major conclusions of Fedea's work, carried out by Miriam Hortas-Rico and Jorge Onrubia, is a somewhat smaller increase in average income in large municipalities than in previous years and also the first increase in inequality since the pandemic. “The statistics show very intense movements of opposite signs in many municipalities,” the authors say.

In municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, the average income per filer increased by 1.2% in 2023, while municipal inequality rose by 2.2%, although it is below the 2019 level.

In the year analyzed, the average personal income stood at 25,308 euros per taxpayer and 13,569 euros per inhabitant. The average of the municipal Gini indices went from 0.5058 to 0.5167, which represents an increase in inequality of 2.16%. Among municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the Gini index increased by 90 and decreased by 55.