New York Is 85 Percent Better Than LA

Nate Silver writes:

LA experienced an economic recovery during the second half of the 1990s, but it wasn’t enough to overtake New York. In 1980, New York and Los Angeles had nearly equal per-capita incomes. By 1999, per-capita income in the New York metro area was about $51,500 as compared with $42,500 for LA.

The New York metro area, despite the Sept. 11 attacks and the financial crisis, also grew its income slightly faster than Los Angeles during the 2000s. As a result, instead of having lost its economic crown to Los Angeles, New York’s metro-area income is now 85 percent larger than Los Angeles’s — a wider margin than in 1977, when Reggie Jackson won World Series for the Yankees by hitting three home runs in Game 6.