San Francisco is home to the tech industry's Silicon Valley, the area which hosts many of the world's biggest companies and most hopeful startups. The appeal of the region for those involved in technology has drawn a more wealthy demographic, in turn raising the cost of living significantly for much of the population already residing there.
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This has been an ongoing conflict, but new data shows how bad the situation has gotten for the native residents compared to those new to the area. According to SFGate, studies demonstrate that the equality gap in San Francisco is on par with developing countries.
The Gini Coefficient is a long-employed way of measuring inequality, used by the World Bank and other major organizations. With this method, a region measures between 0 and 1, with zero meaning everyone shares the wealth equally and one representing a single individual holding all the wealth.
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According to data from 2012 (and more recent numbers would probably be even less kind), San Francisco's Gini Coefficient is .523--slightly worse than Rwanda's .508. For comparison, Sweden is among the most equal nations at .25, while the United States as a whole sat at .45.
This is a pretty shocking level of inequality within one city, as a portion of the native San Francisco population struggles to come to grips with rapidly increasing housing and real estate costs. As SFGate correctly notes, being poor in San Francisco is not the same as being poor in central Africa (social services and charity make a difference, too), but there is a huge and growing gap between the city's top and bottom earners.
