Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?
The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decline in the rate of income convergence across states and in population flows to high-income places. These changes coincide with a disproportionate increase in housing prices in high-income places, a divergence in the skill-specific returns to moving to high-income places, and a redirection of low-skill migration away from high-income places. We develop a model in which rising housing prices in high-income areas deter low-skill migration and slow income convergence. Using a new panel measure of housing supply regulations, we demonstrate the importance of this channel in the data.
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Copy CitationPeter Ganong and Daniel W. Shoag, "Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?," NBER Working Paper 23609 (2017), https://doi.org/10.3386/w23609.
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Published Versions
Peter Ganong & Daniel Shoag, 2017. "Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?," Journal of Urban Economics, . citation courtesy of 
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