Reducing inequality through shopping - it may be that simple.

New research shows that shuttling even 5 percent of consumer transactions to poorer neighborhoods can reduce income inequality by up to 80 percent

Here is the article - https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/solidarity/shop-here-not-there-science-says-reducing-inequality-is-almost-that-simple-20171120

And here is the research study - Crowdsourcing the Robin Hood effect in cities
https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.08394

To summarize the research - which was done in France and Spain  - by crossing neighborhood boundaries - and intentionally shopping in poorer neighborhoods - you transfer some of the wealth from the wealthy neighborhoods into the poorer ones.  The other thing you do - is you reduce ghettoization by increasing cross boundary movement of peoples, products and ideas.

I live in a very segregated area in the south. It was segregated intentionally. White supremacists used the law to dictate where people could live, what sort of businesses they could run where and more. And when that didn't work  - they used violence to enforce segregation. While the overt violence is no longer a thing, the continued impact of housing segregation and transportation segregation (no - the buses do not go into those neighborhoods), and food segregation and shopping segregation is still with us.

A friend just moved here from California and was shocked at how long it took her to find a Mexican restaurant. They are everywhere in California. But here - you have to go to a migrant farmworker area to get real Mexican food. Where she came from - was not segregated! Where she lives now - is.

I love this idea of crowdsourcing the Robin Hood effect. As individuals - we can divert some of our shopping and food purchases - to poorer neighborhoods and spread the wealth around better. The bonus for us - is we get to eat better food and have more diversity in shopping and everything available to us.

The benefit to the community - is less ghettoization, and less poverty. 

So - why don't people do this more? Fear. Plain and simple. Rich people are scared of poor communities because they think there is more crime there. And sometimes there is more crime. But the more we cross boundaries and shop in places - the less scary those places are.

If we want more diverse, more integrated communities - we need to be leaders and cross those boundaries.

Reducing Income Inequality Through Shopping

Can shopping help us reduce income inequality?  Maybe - there is some research that says it can help - dramatically.

Here is the article: https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/solidarity/shop-here-not-there-science-says-reducing-inequality-is-almost-that-simple-20171120

And here is a link to the research report - https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.08394

Here is the synopsis of the study

Socioeconomic inequalities in cities are embedded in space and result in neighborhood effects, whose harmful consequences have proved very hard to counterbalance efficiently by planning policies alone. Considering redistribution of money flows as a first step toward improved spatial equity, we study a bottom-up approach that would rely on a slight evolution of shopping mobility practices. Building on a database of anonymized credit card transactions in Madrid and Barcelona, we quantify the mobility effort required to reach a reference situation where commercial income is evenly shared among neighborhoods. The redirections of shopping trips preserve key properties of human mobility, including travel distances. Surprisingly, for both cities only a small fraction (∼5%) of trips need to be altered to reach equity situations, improving even other sustainability indicators. The method could be implemented in mobile applications that would assist individuals in reshaping their shopping practices, to promote the spatial redistribution of opportunities in the city.

The key point - if 5% of our shopping dollars were spent in poorer neighborhoods, income inequality can be drastically reduced.  In the cities studied - a 5% shift in the where geographically the money is spent reduced inequality up to 80 percent.

Why this works? "Rewiring shopping trips to cross those neighborhood boundaries can decrease the ghettoization that urban neighborhoods experience."

How can we use this information as individuals?  Well - this sort of solution is a bottom up solution, meaning, we the people need to cross the boundaries and make sure that none of the communities become ghettoized.  Meaning - we don't consider bad neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods and we cross and shift some of our shopping into places that we would otherwise neglect.  We intentionally take affirmative action to ensure that our shopping is diversified.

Part of this is transportation - making sure that people can get to place and feel safe in those spaces so they feel safe spending a portion of their money in those places.

It's an interesting idea and worth exploring I think.