[rayiner]

Poor backwater compared to what? Puerto Rico has a GDP per capita between Spain and Italy.

[tomjakubowski]

And a Gini coefficient (.531 as of 2011) between Guatemala (.530) and Colombia (.535). Italy and Spain are at .319 and .359 respectively. The US as a whole is .475.

[true_religion]

It's an inequality coefficient, not any kind of measure of how "nice" a country is for someone living there.

Countries with a high Gini, tend to segregate more heavily than those who don't, which for the typical 'rich' software developer means that they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto'.

For example, Miami has a high gini at ~0.6 to 0.7 which gives you the palaces overlooking shacks effect of Miami Beach.

High gini also correlates with extreme economic growth, where the benefits fall onto a small group (e.g. software developers), and a reversion to the mean hasn't yet taken place.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto'

cough cough the Bay Area. Seriously, though, the Santa Clara County metropolitan statistical area clocks in at 0.45 while New York is 0.60 [1].

[1] https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-18.pdf

[Spooky23]

County statistics are misleading here. Santa Clara County is a big place (almost the size of Long Island) with lots of municipalities. New York County is just 1 of 5 counties that encompass New York City!

If you look at Brooklyn (Kings County), the number is 0.499, Queens County the number is 0.433.

According to another site, the citywide number was 0.547 in 2013. ( https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/inequality-new-york-city-we... )

[anovikov]

rayiner definitely meant per capita GDP. Yes people calling the place a poor backwater have American bias for sure.