Power Couples: Changes in the Locational Choice of the College Educated, 1940-1990

Abstract

College educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas. These areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940, 39 percent in 1970, and 50 percent in 1990. We investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem. We argue that the latter explanation is the primary one. Smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer.

Urban growth drivers in a Europe of sticky people and implicit boundaries

“…The log of population size is included with the expectation that larger cities would have grown faster because of productivity gains in larger urban areas (see Costa and Kahn, 2000 for a convincing account of at least one potential source for such gains). Dynamic agglomeration economies are another possible explanation.…”

Family life in power couples.

“…A "power couple" is a feature of modern life that is defined as two individuals, both having high -powered careers, or being influential otherwise (see Costa and Kahn 2000;Compton and Pollak 2004). Today's power couples are different from those of the past (Abbott 2003), and the growth in the number of these couples is related to the huge increase in women's education and labour force participation since the 1960s, and the increased prevalence of the dual-earner family.…”

Labor Market Density and Increasing Returns to Scale: How Strong is the Evidence?

“…The chained price that is used to de ‡ate GSP data is based on the national price of goods produced in each industry. 12 The aggregate state real GSP and state real GSP by one-digit SIC industry are chain-weighted sums of the disaggregated pieces. Real state GSP represents the composition of state production valued at common national prices.…”

“…13 12 The BEA has price data for 63 industries. Real state GSP is generated by summing up (using chainweights) all 63 components of state output.…”