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Moving to High Quality of Life By Jordan Rappaport |
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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 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. The faster
growth of high-amenity places is considerably strengthened if they have low
initial equilibrium population density underpinned by low relative
productivity. Productivity is shown to be a decreasingly important
determinant of local population. Among places with identical amenities but
varying productivity, equilibrium densities converge over time. Local
amenities are thus the sole determinant of asymptotic local population
density. Back to top RWP home |