TY - JOUR
T1 - Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill
AU - Edlund, Lena
AU - Machado, Cecilia
AU - Sviatschi, Maria
N1 - Funding Information: This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES) Finance Code 001. Funding Information: We have benefited from discussions with Joe Altonji, Nathan Baum-Snow, V. V. Chari, Julie Cullen, David Deming, Jonathan Fisher, Jonathan Heathcote, Matthew Kahn, Jeanne Lafortune, Shirley Liu, Douglas Lucius, Chris Mayer, Enrico Moretti, Marcelo Moreira, Jordan Rappaport, Bernard Salanie, Aloysius Siow, seminar participants at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, the Barcelona Graduate Summer School 2015, the Econometric Society World Congress August 2015, the 2016 Research Symposium on Gentrification and Neighborhood Change at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the 2016 Canadian Women Economists Network Luncheon, the 31st European Economic Association Annual Congress 2016, Lacea 2016, the 2016 mini-conference on family/labour/development economics at CUHK, Simon Fraser University and seminar participants in USP, PUC-Rio and Insper. We thank the New York Federal Statistical Research Data Centers, Baruch, Center for Economic Studies, US Census Bureau. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the US Census Bureau. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES) Finance Code 001. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The London School of Economics and Political Science
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - Suburbanization—thriving suburbs surrounding increasingly impoverished inner cities—dominated the US postwar urban landscape. However, already in the 1980s there were signs of urban rejuvenation, and the decades since have seen gentrification replace urban decay. In this paper, we argue that this trend reversal stems from the rise in hours worked by high-income households, epitomized by the dual-earner household replacing the breadwinner–housewife household. Using a Bartik-style share shifter for skilled labour demand and analysing restricted-use Census microdata covering the 27 largest US cities for the period 1980–2010, we find support for our hypothesis. ‘Low-leisure-high-skill’ households showed a pronounced proclivity towards central city location and their estimated effect on housing prices can account for the observed emergence of centrality as an increasingly prized amenity.
AB - Suburbanization—thriving suburbs surrounding increasingly impoverished inner cities—dominated the US postwar urban landscape. However, already in the 1980s there were signs of urban rejuvenation, and the decades since have seen gentrification replace urban decay. In this paper, we argue that this trend reversal stems from the rise in hours worked by high-income households, epitomized by the dual-earner household replacing the breadwinner–housewife household. Using a Bartik-style share shifter for skilled labour demand and analysing restricted-use Census microdata covering the 27 largest US cities for the period 1980–2010, we find support for our hypothesis. ‘Low-leisure-high-skill’ households showed a pronounced proclivity towards central city location and their estimated effect on housing prices can account for the observed emergence of centrality as an increasingly prized amenity.
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U2 - https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12398
DO - https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12398
M3 - Article
SN - 0013-0427
VL - 89
SP - 258
EP - 292
JO - Economica
JF - Economica
IS - 354
ER -