Moving to high quality of life

Jordan Rappaport

No RWP 07-02, Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Abstract: The U.S. population has been migrating to places with high perceived quality of life. A calibrated general-equilibrium model shows that such migration follows from broad-based technological progress. Rising national wages increase demand for consumption amenities. Under a baseline parameterization, a place with amenities for which individuals would pay 5 percent of their income grows 0.3 percent faster than an otherwise identical place. Productivity is shown to be a decreasingly important determinant of local population. The faster growth of high-amenity places is considerably strengthened if they have low initial equilibrium population density underpinned by low relative productivity. Places with identical amenities asymptotically converge to an identical population density, regardless of their relative productivity levels. An implication is that the high growth rates of high-amenity localities should eventually taper off.>

Keywords: Consumption (Economics); Quality of life (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/5343/pdf-rwp07-02.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:fip:fedkrw:rwp07-02

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zach Kastens ().