Measuring Living standards within cities
Basic living standards in Africa vary continuously and increase monotonically across population density
Abstract
This paper shows that basic living standards in Africa vary continuously and increase almost always monotonically across population density. While there are compelling reasons why individuals might not move from the most rural to the most densely populated locations, our results suggest that individuals may be able to improve their welfare by moving within their country to a marginally more densely populated area. Two reasons this might not happen are the presence of compensating differentials for rural residents or limited absorptive capacity of cities. The authors do not find evidence for either of these explanations and conclude that theories ought to address this striking empirical regularity
Citation
Doug Gollin, Martina Kirchberger, David Lagakos, (2016) Measuring Living standards within cities