IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/econom/2019-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill

Author

Listed:
  • Lena Edlund

    (Columbia University)

  • Cecilia Machado

    (Getulio Vargas Foundation)

  • Maria Micaela Sviatschi

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

In 1980, housing prices in large US cities rose with distance from the city center. By 2010, that relationship had reversed. We propose that the inversion can be traced to more hours worked by the skilled. Scarce non-market time downgrades the importance of residential space and upgrades that of proximity to work, factors favoring the central-city location. Geo- coded census micro data covering the 27 largest US cities and the period 1980-2010 support our hypothesis: full-time skilled workers are more likely to locate in the city center and their growth can account for the observed price changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Lena Edlund & Cecilia Machado & Maria Micaela Sviatschi, 2019. "Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," Working Papers 2019-32, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2019-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21729/w21729.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2018. "Bobos in paradise: Urban politics and the new economy," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-36.
    2. Madden, Janice Fanning, 1980. "Urban Land Use and the Growth in Two-Earner Households," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 191-197, May.
    3. Giovanni Favara & Jean Imbs, 2015. "Credit Supply and the Price of Housing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 958-992, March.
    4. John J. Donohue III & Steven D. Levitt, 2001. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 379-420.
    5. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1992. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 35-78.
    6. Peter Mieszkowski & Edwin S. Mills, 1993. "The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 135-147, Summer.
    7. Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, 2000. "Power Couples: Changes in the Locational Choice of the College Educated, 1940–1990," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1287-1315.
    8. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2008. "Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Revising the Revisionists," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 300-323, May.
    9. Guerrieri, Veronica & Hartley, Daniel & Hurst, Erik, 2013. "Endogenous gentrification and housing price dynamics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 45-60.
    10. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    11. Enrico Moretti, 2013. "Real Wage Inequality," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 65-103, January.
    12. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M, 1997. "Wage Inequality and Family Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 72-97, January.
    13. Peter Kuhn & Fernando Lozano, 2005. "The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979-2004," NBER Working Papers 11895, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2005. "Urban Decline and Durable Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 345-375, April.
    15. Lena Edlund & Cecilia Machado & Maria Micaela Sviatschi, 2015. "Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," NBER Working Papers 21729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Andrews,Donald W. K. & Stock,James H. (ed.), 2005. "Identification and Inference for Econometric Models," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521844413, January.
    17. Costa, Dora L, 2000. "The Wage and the Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 156-181, January.
    18. Fran?ois Ortalo-Magn? & Andrea Prat, 2014. "On the Political Economy of Urban Growth: Homeownership versus Affordability," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 154-181, February.
    19. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, 2007. "Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime," NBER Working Papers 13097, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Brueckner, Jan K. & Thisse, Jacques-Francois & Zenou, Yves, 1999. "Why is central Paris rich and downtown Detroit poor?: An amenity-based theory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 91-107, January.
    21. repec:hal:pseose:hal-01301589 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Oi, Walter Y, 1976. "Residential Location and Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 221-238, August.
    23. Joseph Gyourko & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2013. "Superstar Cities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 167-199, November.
    24. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    25. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    26. Jan K. Brueckner & Stuart S. Rosenthal, 2009. "Gentrification and Neighborhood Housing Cycles: Will America's Future Downtowns Be Rich?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(4), pages 725-743, November.
    27. Timothy J. Bartik, 1991. "Who Benefits from State and Local Economic Development Policies?," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number wbsle.
    28. Edlund, Lena & Machado, Cecilia & Sviatschi, Maria Micaela, 2015. "Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," IZA Discussion Papers 9502, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    29. LeRoy, Stephen F. & Sonstelie, Jon, 1983. "Paradise lost and regained: Transportation innovation, income, and residential location," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 67-89, January.
    30. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb & Joseph Gyourko, 2012. "Can Cheap Credit Explain the Housing Boom?," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and the Financial Crisis, pages 301-359, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    31. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2007. "Enhanced routines for instrumental variables/generalized method of moments estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(4), pages 465-506, December.
    32. Black, Dan & Gates, Gary & Sanders, Seth & Taylor, Lowell, 2002. "Why Do Gay Men Live in San Francisco?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 54-76, January.
    33. Riccardo DiCecio & Kristie M. Engemann & Michael T. Owyang & Christopher H. Wheeler, 2008. "Changing trends in the labor force: a survey," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(Jan), pages 47-62.
    34. Albouy, David & Lue, Bert, 2015. "Driving to opportunity: Local rents, wages, commuting, and sub-metropolitan quality of life," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 74-92.
    35. Paul Beaudry & Mark Doms & Ethan Lewis, 2010. "Should the Personal Computer Be Considered a Technological Revolution? Evidence from U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 988-1036.
    36. Wojciech Kopczuk & Emmanuel Saez & Jae Song, 2010. "Earnings Inequality and Mobility in the United States: Evidence from Social Security Data Since 1937," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 91-128.
    37. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2009. "The Increase in Leisure Inequality, 1965–2005," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 51000, September.
    38. Glaeser, Edward L. & Kahn, Matthew E. & Rappaport, Jordan, 2008. "Why do the poor live in cities The role of public transportation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-24, January.
    39. Reyes Jessica Wolpaw, 2007. "Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-43, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edlund, Lena & Machado, Cecilia & Sviatschi, Maria Micaela, 2015. "Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," IZA Discussion Papers 9502, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Edlund, Lena & Machado, Cecilia & Sviatschi, Maria, 2015. "Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," IZA Discussion Papers 9502, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Lena Edlund & Cecilia Machado & Maria Micaela Sviatschi, 2015. "Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," NBER Working Papers 21729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lena Edlund & Cecilia Machado & Maria Sviatschi, 2022. "Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 258-292, April.
    5. Victor Couture & Jessie Handbury, 2017. "Urban Revival in America, 2000 to 2010," NBER Working Papers 24084, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Ross, Stephen L., 2015. "Change and Persistence in the Economic Status of Neighborhoods and Cities," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1047-1120, Elsevier.
    7. Jackelyn Hwang & Jeffrey Lin, 2016. "What Have We Learned About the Causes of Recent Gentrification?," Working Papers 16-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    8. Ellen, Ingrid Gould & Horn, Keren Mertens & Reed, Davin, 2019. "Has falling crime invited gentrification?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    9. Marques Benton & Lynn E. Browne & Sol Carbonell & Prabal Chakrabarti & DeAnna Green & Yolanda Kodrzycki & Ana Patricia Munoz & Anna Steiger & Richard Walker & Bo Zhao, 2011. "Housing policy and poverty in Springfield," Public and Community Affairs Discussion Papers 2011-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    10. Couture, Victor & Handbury, Jessie, 2020. "Urban revival in America," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    11. Eisenbarth, Anthony & Chen, Zhou Fu, 2022. "The evolution of wage inequality within local U.S. labor markets," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 56, pages 1-2.
    12. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2015. "Urban Land Use," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 467-560, Elsevier.
    13. Ingrid Gould Ellen & Keren Mertens Horn & Davin Reed, 2017. "Has Falling Crime Invited Gentrification?," Working Papers 17-27, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    14. Wu, JunJie & Sexton, Steven & Zilberman, David, 2019. "Energy price shocks, household location patterns and housing crises: Theory and implications," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 691-706.
    15. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    16. Broxterman, Daniel A. & Yezer, Anthony M., 2015. "Why does skill intensity vary across cities? The role of housing cost," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 14-27.
    17. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Hartley, Daniel, 2020. "Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    18. JunJie Wu, 2010. "Economic Fundamentals And Urban–Suburban Disparities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 570-591, May.
    19. Eric D Gould, 2019. "Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline and Low-skilled Immigration," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1281-1326.
    20. Picarelli, Nathalie, 2019. "There Is No Free House," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 35-52.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gentrification; suburbanization; returns to skill; labor supply; location choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2019-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.