Inequality and City Size

Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Ronni Pavan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A strong positive monotonic relationship between wage inequality and city size developed between 1979 and 2007 in the United States. After accounting for differences in skill composition across cities of different sizes, at least 23 percent of the nationwide increase in the variance of log hourly wages is explained by the more rapid growth in wage inequality in larger locations than in smaller locations. This influence occurred throughout the wage distribution, was most prevalent during the 1990s, and was mostly driven by more rapid growth in within skill group inequality in larger cities. J310, R230
Original languageEnglish
JournalThe Review of Economics and Statistics
Early online date10 Oct 2012
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

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