Income gap closes in rural suburbs, Census says

USA Today reports:

Fast-growing suburbs sprouting on farmland near thriving metropolitan areas are much less likely to be home to people of widely disparate incomes than urban centers, according to Census data.

In a nation that continues to see the gap between the very rich and the very poor widen, these new, remote suburbs stand out as islands of income equality.

Kendall County, Ill., 40 miles west of Chicago, has the least economic disparity among 783 U.S. counties included in the 2006 income and poverty survey released last month.

New York County — Manhattan — and some of its toniest suburbs rank high on the list of places where the gaps among income groups are the widest.

"The big urban coastal counties, with high housing costs and immigrant service workers, have an 'upstairs-downstairs' residential population," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. "Meanwhile, middle-class residents have gravitated to outer suburbs."

Suburbs historically have appealed to middle-class families that could not afford a home in central cities. Many also were escaping crime, poverty and diversity.

Their departure created a huge income gap in cities because, often, mostly the poor and the rich remained.

No word yet form New York liberals on this one.