Cities, skills, and inequality

Christopher Wheeler ()

No 2004-020, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: The surge in U.S. wage inequality over the past several decades is now commonly attributed to an increase in the returns paid to skill. Although theories differ with respect to why, specifically, this increase has come about, many agree that it is strongly tied to the increase in the relative supply of skilled (i.e. highly educated) workers in the U.S. labor market. A greater supply of skilled labor, for example, may have induced skill-biased technological change or generated greater stratification of workers by skill across firms or jobs. Given that metropolitan areas in the U.S. have long possessed more educated populations than non-metropolitan areas, these theories suggest that the rise in both the returns to skill and wage inequality should have been particularly pronounced in cities. Evidence from the U.S. Census over the period 1950 to 1990 supports both implications.

Keywords: Wages; Regional economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Growth and Change, Summer 2005, 36(3), pp. 329-53

Downloads: (external link)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2004/2004-020.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Cities, Skills, and Inequality (2005)
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:fedlwp:2004-020

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().