While it's possible to ignore the wealth imbalance growing around her, Lavery said she worries about its social costs.

"When you live in a town where there's so much affluence, it's sometimes easy for people to lose sight of that, and to raise children who never understand that," she said as she sat in her electric-blue Mini Cooper parked at the Greenwich Public Library. "They value money and things over hard work and helping others."

Lavery is spearheading a revamp of a run-down public pool, which she hopes will also attract wealthy residents who now huddle at local country clubs.

Greenwich, home to at least 50 of the state's more than 150 hedge funds and with a median annual household income of $125,000, has earned a reputation as a place of stone-gated neighborhood associations with custom-landscaped vegetable gardens. Residents paid more income taxes to the state in 2009 than any other municipality, even though the town is only the 10th-largest in Connecticut.

One doesn't need to leave the town to see disparity. About 2,150 of its 60,000 residents live in poverty, defined as less than $22,113 for a family of four, according to the 2010 American Community Survey. More than 10 percent of public school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the United Way's Greenwich chapter says, and there are 1,195 units of subsidized housing.

Economists measure income disparity using the so-called Gini coefficient, named after an Italian statistician who developed the formula in 1912. A measure of 0 means all money is evenly distributed; 1 means one person has it all. The Bridgeport metro area's Gini was .537 in 2010, the highest in the U.S. and up from .459 in 2000, census data show. The nation's grew during this time as well, to .469 from .46.

Income inequality isn't just an issue for people living in communities most affected by it; persistent differences can stunt economic growth and make countries more susceptible to financial crises, said Nora Lustig, an economics professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. It may also lead to social and political instability and a workforce lacking skills, she said.

Other experts such as Howard Rosen, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, disagree. He argues that the problem of U.S. inequality is overstated and doesn't threaten to crimp growth.

He cited OECD data showing that all income levels have grown in the U.S., whereas nations such as Israel and Japan have seen earnings fall for the bottom 10 percent from the mid-1980s. "A rising tide raises all boats," he said.

The tide isn't apparent in much of Bridgeport. Dollar Dreams hawks hair brushes and toilet paper next to a Rent-A- Center Inc. store, the largest rent-to-own company in an industry whose payment plans for people with bad credit can inflate prices of laptop computers and washing machines by more than 300 percent, according to a Consumer Reports study.