2.2.2. The Geographers Advocate Regional Polarization

Looking at the human geography literature easily gets you to the point. Braun (1991) published an article entitled “Income Inequality and Economic Development: Geographic Divergence”, Amos (1988) writes about “Unbalanced regional growth and regional income inequality in the latter stages of development”, Coughlin and Mandelbaum (1988) “Why have state per capita income diverge recently?”, Fan and Casetti (1994) “The spatial and temporal dynamics of U.S. regional income inequality, 1950-1989.”

Using the state-level per capita income data published by the Bureau of the Census, Fan and Casetti (1994) shed light on the short-term dynamics of regional inequalities in the United States between 1950 and 1989. In their 1994 publication, they acknowledge the influence of Kuznets’ convergence on the empirical literature. However, they consider the explanation of economic development as “static and deterministic:” The model they suggest lays emphasis on the regional dynamics accounting for the spatial flows of factors of production, that in turn affect the patterns of regional income inequality. The authors stress three successive phases: the “polarization” of factors of production, or regional divergence; the reverse process (“polarization reversal”), or regional convergence; finally, the re-allocation of production factors flowing across the United States and the renewed growth of some traditional core states, such as the recent increase in regional income inequality.