🚨 I have a new paper in @pnas.org! Big cities provide huge opportunities for workers to climb up the income ladder through their large number and diversity of jobs. Big cities also have higher racial wage inequality, which is getting worse over time. #geosky #econsky www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 1/ - ThreadSky

maxbuchholz.bsky.social • 20 days ago

🚨 I have a new paper in @pnas.org! Big cities provide huge opportunities for workers to climb up the income ladder through their large number and diversity of jobs. Big cities also have higher racial wage inequality, which is getting worse over time.
#geosky #econsky
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409935122

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

We show that this is almost entirely explained by "experience effects" - the initial benefits of locating in a big city are not that different across race, but over time, White workers get much greater returns to each year they spend working in a big city than Black and Latinx workers.

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

For instance, for each year that a White worker works in a big city, their wages increase by about 42 cents/hr more than if they spent that time outside a big city - this number is about 21 and 10 cents for Black and Latinx workers. Over a career this means 1000s in annual wage inequality.

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

This is largely explained by the far greater returns White workers get from working in occupations that have tasks which require high degrees of "abstract reasoning" and "cognitive skills" (often called "high-skill" occs), which are concentrated in big cities.

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

Each year of experience in one of these occs increases White wages by 88 cents/hr, but only 46 and 61 cents for Black and Latinx workers. This is key, as it is these "high-skill" occs which often make big cities such great places for many to live (and offset high cost-of-living).

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

But it's not just big cities. We find even larger inequalities in experience effects for expensive cities. This suggests high cost AND large populations come together to create particularly strong barriers to Black and Latinx workers accessing good jobs with high levels of upward mobility.

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maxbuchholz.bsky.social•20 days ago

Last thing is I want to give a quick shout out to my colleagues @dyligent.bsky.social and @tkemeny.bsky.social who also just published a very similar paper. Makes me confident we're all on to something here! Links to both papers:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409935122

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/2/pgae587/7994571

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