Spatiality of regional inequality

Spatial inequality has drawn renewed scholarly interests and societal concerns. This paper reviews the literature on regional inequality, with a focus on spatiality of regional economic/income inequality, to make a timely contribution for a better understanding of the complexity and dynamics of spatial inequality. We find that existing theories disagree over temporal trends and underlying forces of regional inequality, and spatio-temporal models have been favored by economic geographers. It also shows that the research on regional inequality covers all continents of the world, including both developed and developing countries. The scope of research has also been broadened, expanding to household and environmental inequalities. The paper proposes components of spatiality of regional inequality, including scale, location, physical geography, place, space, spatial network, and spatial-temporal models. The paper also proposes areas for future research.