GEOWEALTH-US: spatial wealth inequality data for the United States, 1960–2020

Wealth inequality has been sharply rising in the United States and across many other high-income countries. Due to a lack of data, we know little about how this trend has unfolded across locations within countries. Examining the subnational geography of wealth is crucial because, from one generation to the next, it shapes the distribution of opportunity, disadvantage, and power across individuals and communities. By employing machine-learning-based imputation to link national historical surveys conducted by the U.S. Federal Reserve to population survey microdata, the data presented in this article addresses this gap. The Geographic Wealth Inequality Database (“GEOWEALTH-US”) provides the first estimates of the level and distribution of wealth at various geographical scales within the United States from 1960 to 2020. The GEOWEALTH-US database enables new lines of investigation into the contribution of spatial wealth disparities to major societal challenges including wealth concentration, income inequality, social mobility, housing unaffordability, and political polarization

Creative Economy Employment in the US, Canada and the UK

The US has the largest creative economy employment of the US, UK and Canada employing 14.2 million people. Canada had the largest creative economy employment as a percentage of the workforce at 12.9 per cent. Employment in the UK creative economy grew at 4.7 per cent per annum on average between 2011 and 2013, faster than the US between (3.1 per cent). A comparison with Canadian growth over this period was not possible with the data available. The largest centre of creative economy employment in the US in absolute terms is the New York-Newark-New Jersey Metro area employing 1.2 million people (12.7 per cent of the workforce) in 2013. The creative economy employment of this area in absolute and percentage terms is comparable to that of the Greater South East of England (London, the South East and Eastern regions). This employs 1.3 million people in the creative economy, 12.3 per cent of the workforce. This report provides consistent statistics on the US and Canadian creative economies in comparison to the UK. Creative economy employment being employment in creative industries and in creative occupations outside of these. Employment figures for creative industry groups are also provided. The report also analyses creative economy employment at a sub-national level for the US and UK, and the national level growth rates for these two countries between 2011 and 2013. The report applies the official UK creative industry classification to produce a best possible fit creative industries definition in the US and Canadian data. The report is based on analysing the US American Community Survey, the Canadian Household survey and the UK Annual Population Survey. A companion report that examines the creative industries employment in the 28 member states of the EU was published in December 2015

On the Vacancy-Zn Atom Binding Energy in Al

Binding energy between a vacancy and a Zn atom in Al was investigated by measurement of as-quenched resistivity in Al-0.021at % Zn and pure-Al, with the estimation of vacancy loss during quenching. The contribution of clusters to resistivity in Al-0.021at % Zn waa also investigated. Their results are summarized as follows: (1) The results of isothermal and isochronal annealing indicate that clusters in Al-0.021at % Zn cnuld not be detected beyond the experimental errors. (2) The model applied to estimate the vacancy loss in pure-Al has enough validity. The quantitative estimation of clusters ana the improvement in experimental conditions are greatly desired, which enable the more detailed, analysis of the data

Does Assimilation Shape the Economic Value of Immigrant Diversity?

A growing literature has shown that greater diversity among immigrants offers material benefits in terms of higher wages and productivity. One limitation of existing work is that it has considered immigrants from a given country to be homogenous. However, immigrants differ in various ways, not least in their level of assimilation. This article considers how assimilation might shape diversity’s economic effects. Intuition suggests two conflicting dynamics. Assimilation could lower barriers immigrants and natives face in interacting with one another, and thus enhance benefits. Equally, however, assimilation could reduce heuristic differences between immigrants and native-born workers, dampening spillovers from diversity. We use linked employer–employee data from Norway to test these ideas. We construct diversity indices at the regional and workplace scale to capture different aspects of assimilation, and observe how these are related to worker productivity, proxied using wages. We find that assimilation dampens externalities from immigrant diversity. Diversity among second-generation or childhood migrants offers smaller benefits than diversity in teenage or adult arrivals. Immigrants’ cultural proximity to Norway, and their experience of tertiary education in Norway, each also reduce the social return to diversity. While assimilation processes may benefit society in various ways, these findings are consistent with the idea that, by diminishing the heuristic gaps between migrants and native-born workers, integration reduces the productivity externalities derived from immigrant diversity.publishedVersio

The changing shape of spatial income disparities in the United States

Spatial income disparities have increased in the US since 1980, a pattern linked to major social, economic, and political challenges. Yet, today’s spatial inequality, and how it relates to the past, remains insufficiently well understood. The primary contribution of this article is to demonstrate a deep polarization in the American spatial system—yet one whose character differs from that commonly reported on in the literature. The increase in spatial inequality since 1980 is almost entirely driven by a small number of populous, economically important, and resiliently high-income superstar city-regions. But we also show that the rest of the system exhibits a long-run pattern of income convergence over the study period. A secondary contribution is historical: today’s superstars have sat durably atop the urban hierarchy since at least 1940. Third, we describe six distinctive pathways of development that regions follow between 1940 and 2019, with certain locations catching up, falling behind, and surging ahead. We explore the role played by initial endowments in driving locations down these pathways, finding population, education, industrial structure, and immigrant attraction to be key distinguishing features. These insights are enabled by a fourth contribution: methodologically, we use group-based trajectory modeling—an approach new to the field that integrates top-down and bottom-up views of the evolving national spatial system. We conclude by exploring implications for the mid-twenty-first century

Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality

Although technological change is widely credited as driving the last 200 years of economic growth, its role in shaping patterns of inequality remains under-explored. Drawing parallels across two industrial revolutions in the United States, this paper provides new evidence of a relationship between highly disruptive forms of innovation and spatial inequality. Using the universe of patents granted between 1920 and 2010 by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), we identify disruptive innovations through their rapid growth, complementarity with other innovations and widespread use. We then assign more and less disruptive innovations to subnational regions in the geography of the United States. We document three findings that are new to the literature. First, disruptive innovations exhibit distinctive spatial clustering in phases understood to be those in which industrial revolutions reshape the economy; they are increasingly dispersed in other periods. Second, we discover that the ranks of locations that capture the most disruptive innovation are relatively unstable across industrial revolutions. Third, regression estimates suggest a role for disruptive innovation in regulating overall patterns of spatial output and income inequality

GEOWEALTH-US: Spatial wealth inequality data for the United States, 1960–2020

Abstract Wealth inequality has been sharply rising in the United States and across many other high-income countries. Due to a lack of data, we know little about how this trend has unfolded across locations within countries. Examining the subnational geography of wealth is crucial because, from one generation to the next, it shapes the distribution of opportunity, disadvantage, and power across individuals and communities. By employing machine-learning-based imputation to link national historical surveys conducted by the U.S. Federal Reserve to population survey microdata, the data presented in this article addresses this gap. The Geographic Wealth Inequality Database (“GEOWEALTH-US”) provides the first estimates of the level and distribution of wealth at various geographical scales within the United States from 1960 to 2020. The GEOWEALTH-US database enables new lines of investigation into the contribution of spatial wealth disparities to major societal challenges including wealth concentration, income inequality, social mobility, housing unaffordability, and political polarization