Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Empirical research has returned little evidence that gentrification raises the rate at which lower income households are pushed out of their neighborhoods. Nevertheless, it is clear that the hot market in many US cities has made it more difficult for such households to move into previously affordable inner city areas. Meanwhile, there is some evidence that poverty rates in suburban areas have begun to grow. Have lower income households, finding it hard to locate or relocate within the city, begun to move to the suburbs? We look into this hypothesis as it pertains to New York City. In particular, we ask the following questions: have lower income households in general chosen different kinds of neighborhoods as rents in the city have increased? Has NYC experienced a push of lower income households towards the suburbs? 

Policymakers might care about the shift for a number of reasons, of which we suggest three. First, longer commuting times reduce access to jobs unique to cities. Since the 1980s job growth for low skilled workers has been concentrated in service-related jobs, which are particularly concentrated in bigger cities. As a consequence of the shifting location of low-wage jobs and low-income households, workers and their jobs might become more geographically separated, lowering the well-being of the workers. Further, this might reduce the provision of the services these workers supply to other city residents.

Second, the geographic segregation of socio-economic groups might be a worrying trend. Larger degrees of integration have been linked to social mobility. Higher social mobility both provides access to a larger pool of talent in the economy and is at the center of our understanding of equality and fairness. Therefore, segregation might be an outcome of economic forces that policy makers would like to affect.  

Third, cities in the United States have developed mechanisms for wealth redistribution and, indeed, have often been designed with the needs of lower-income populations at least partially in mind, while suburbs usually have not. The shift in populations between cities and suburbs may have implications for the design of redistributive, housing, and other programs at the city, state, and federal level, as well as implications for the political dynamics of various localities.

Our analysis has four parts. In parts one and two we investigate the plausibility of the hypothesis that households with lower socio-economic status are moving selectively to the suburbs. First, we document if the characteristics of inhabitants of the suburbs have changed since 1990. Next, we analyze how this compositional change is related to the migration flows into and out of the suburbs. In parts three and four, we look for evidence in line with the hypothesis that accessibility to jobs and segregation are affected. We look into commuting and employment patterns to address issues of accessibility. Finally, we investigate if changes in suburb composition have led to greater socio-economic segregation between suburbs and the city.