Cities and the Growth of Wages Among Young Workers: Evidence from the Nlsy
Cities and the Growth of Wages Among Young Workers: Evidence from the Nlsy
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.760386
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发表时间：
2005-07
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Christopher H. Wheeler
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文献类型：
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作者：
Christopher H. Wheeler
以人力资本为基础的城市理论认为，经济上多样化的大型城市群通过提高个人获得技能的速度来提高工人的生产率。这一理论的一个基本上未被探索的含义是，随着时间的推移，大城市的工人应该比较小市场的可比工人看到更快的收入增长。本文探讨了这一影响，使用的样本数据的年轻男性工人从全国青年纵向调查1979年队列。结果表明，在经济上多样化的大型当地劳动力市场（定义为县和大都市地区），收入增长确实往往比规模较小、更专业的市场更快。然而，当更详细地研究时，我也发现这种关联往往是由于工作变化而导致的工资增长更快的产物，而不是在特定工作中经历的工资增长更快。这一结果与城市通过求职和匹配过程提高工人生产力的想法是一致的，因此，城市中“学习”的一个重要方面可能涉及个人学习他们擅长的事情。
Human capital-based theories of cities suggest that large, economically diverse urban agglomerations increase worker productivity by increasing the rate at which individuals acquire skills. One largely unexplored implication of this theory is that workers in big cities should see faster growth in their earnings over time than comparable workers in smaller markets. This paper examines this implication using data on a sample of young male workers drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort. The results suggest that earnings growth does tend to be faster in large, economically diverse local labor markets - defined as counties and metropolitan areas - than in smaller, more specialized markets. Yet, when examined in greater detail, I also find that this association tends to be the product of faster wage growth due to job changes rather than faster wage growth experienced while on a particular job. This result is consistent with the idea that cities enhance worker productivity through a job search and matching process and, thus, that an important aspect of 'learning' in cities may involve individuals learning about what they do well.