Thank you for this update and for clarifying that the wealth gap is not caused by students. And for clarifying that by virtue of being a diverse city, we have poor people! But you still did not respond to request for clarifications regarding your statement that "the area of central Berkeley bounded by University Avenue and Oxford Street has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the Bay Area." First of all, what are the two other streets in this boundary? Do you mean south of University or north? Does this represent a specific census tract that the researcher looked at? More info please!

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/13XTb)

It appears that the articles you have been writing address the question of which Bay area City has the highest level of inequality without adequately addressing the reasons in the larger context of inequality in the United States, California, and the Bay area, and most importantly, addressing steps that bay area cities are taking to remedy it. Urban flight to the suburbs beginning in the 50's was to develop homogeneous towns that would serve the middle classes and that still goes on. And so, what you need to address is not why there is more inequality in cities which attempt to promote diversity, such as, Berkeley, but why so many other bay area cities and towns are still so homogenously poor like Richmond or so exclusively wealthy like Orinda or Ross, CA. This would include an examination of the relative public policies and how they are utilized in a comparative study of bay area communities including land zoning laws. I agree with the respondent who suggested the title, 'Other Bay Area Cities Force Out Poor, But not Berkeley'.

I agree that a more relevant title would have been "Other Bay Area Cities Force Out Poor, But not Berkeley." It's not always comfortable living in economic diversity -- the haves with the have-nots. But somehow Berkeley does it without the economic-based partisan gridlock we see nationally.

I'd also like to know the boundaries of "one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the Bay Area."

Most of those who attend Berkeley are from families in the upper 5% anyway.

I found this article quite informative. I have long noticed that countries with large Gini coefficients tend to have low human development indices and, in general a large degree of personal misery. There is also a tendency for fundamentalist/nationalist attitudes to dominate in these areas, such as Northwestern Africa.

I am curious as to whether, in this country, there is a correlation between high Gini coefficients and the academic "achievement gap" between African-American and White students. I've played with CST (California Standards Test) data for quite some time and reluctantly admit that Berkeley public schools have one of the larger achievement gaps in the Bay Area. There has been much public attention paid to this gap in Berkeley, including a "Vision 2020" campaign intended to remove it by 2020. I can't help but wonder if the base cause of the gap includes income/wealth inequality that cannot be addressed by the school district directly.

I don't think your arguments prove that the wealth gap in Berkeley is not caused by the student population. It does not matter that the Gini index calculation excluded group housing because not all students live in group housing. Most do not. In the census tract you reference, Tract #4229, which is basically the downtown area, 85% of the population is aged 18-24.

Also, comparing Berkeley's Gini index to the those other college towns with Gini scores closer to the national average does not disprove that students cause the wealth gap in Berkeley. Housing is less expensive in those other towns. Because Berkeley is more expensive, there are more wealthy households. Therefore, the range of incomes in Berkeley will be wider with a lot households on the high-income end and a lot of households on the low-income (student) end, leading to a higher Gini score.

Another factor would be the proportion of younger people who are presumably lower-income students. Where there is a higher proportion of student age population one would expect a lower Gini score because the students' low incomes will pull the score towards more equitable. In Berkeley, roughly 20% of the population is 18-24 years old; in Davis it is 30%. (And this calculation factored out the group housing population).

You discuss research by Alan Berube. Could you please provide a reference to that research? I have briefly looked through his publications on the Brookings website and have not found one that supports your conclusions.