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Ep 38: The Housing Supply-Migration-Income Relationship with Peter Ganong
UCLA Housing Voice
English - November 30, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 44.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 86 ratingsSocial Sciences Science housing affordable housing housing affordability housing supply tenant protections housing research land use research housing policy unaffordable rent rising rent Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Prior to 1980, per-capita income gaps between poor states and rich states were persistently shrinking, driven by the migration of lower-income, less skilled workers to higher-paying regions. Since then, this “regional income convergence” phenomenon has declined. What happened? As always, there’s a housing story to tell. Peter Ganong joins us to discuss his (and coauthor Daniel Shoag’s) research into the relationship between land use regulation, housing supply, household migration, and income. Their troubling finding: it no longer makes sense for many lower-income households to move to states with higher-paying jobs — after accounting for housing costs, some are actually worse off when they do so. This “skill sorting” of high-wage workers into expensive metro areas and low-wage workers into cheaper metros has worrying implications for accessing better opportunities, and much of it is driven by sharp restrictions on homebuilding in the highest-income states.