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

Lena Edlund, Cecilia Machado and Maria Sviatschi

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: In 1980, Census data indicate, housing prices in large US cities rose with distance from the city center. By 2010, the relationship had reversed. We propose that this development can be traced to high-income households working longer hours. With little non-market time, proximity to work takes on added salience, leading high-income households to forgo suburban amenities and extending the gentrification trend beyond its 1970s niche status. In a tract-level data set covering the 27 largest US cities, years 1980-2010, we find support for our hypothesis. Using a Bartik-type demand shifter for skilled labor we find that full-time skilled workers favor centrality and the rising share in the population can account for the observed price changes in favor of the city center.

Keywords: Gentrification; suburbanization; returns to skill; labor supply; location choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2016/CES-WP-16-36R.pdf Revised version, 2016 (application/pdf)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2016/CES-WP-16-36.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:16-36

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().