ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the main trends of regional economic development in the United States (US) between 1880 and 2010 at the state level. It discusses data sources and a methodology used to estimate income per capita of US states before 1920. To analyse the long-term development of US regional inequality, time series of real income per capita figures for US states are needed. The chapter discusses the data sources for the nominal income per capita, then a price adjustment necessary to derive real income per capita, and finally an adjustment to construct an internationally comparable set of regional GDP per capita in 1990 GK$. The chapter describes general trends in regional income inequality across US states in 1880–2010 along several dimensions: GDP per capita, sectoral employment, spatial Gini coefficient, and the concept of sigma-converge and beta-convergence.
