The long shadow of local decline: birthplace economic conditions, political attitudes, and long-term individual economic outcomes in the UK

Andrew McNeil, Neil Lee and Davide Luca

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Does growing up in a high-unemployment area matter for individual economic and political outcomes? Despite a significant focus upon the links between place of residence, life outcomes and political attitudes of individuals, there is less evidence on how local economic conditions at birth shape individual wages and political attitudes over the longterm. This paper links the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) micro data from English and Welsh respondents with historic localised information on unemployment. Our results, which control for composition effects, family background, and sorting of people across places, show that being born into a high-unemployment Local Authority has a significant, long-term impact on individual’s economic outcomes, decreasing earnings in adulthood. Even accounting for individual economic outcomes, being born into a local authority of high unemployment makes individuals more economically left-wing, with a greater belief in an obligation for the government to provide jobs, but also less culturally tolerant. These results contribute to the debate on the nature and rationales of placebased policy solutions.

Keywords: place of birth; unemployment; territorial inequality; lifetime mobility; political attitutes; place-based policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J38 J62 R11 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:113681

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