Brother,can you spare some time? Sustaining prosperity and social inclusion in America’s metropolitan regions

Abstract

Understanding the factors and processes that help regions sustain economic growth has become a topic of increasing interest in recent years. We examine factors associated with the length of ‘growth spells’ for the 184 largest regions in the United States from the period 1990–2011. We find that growth duration is positively related to a number of factors one might expect, including lower levels of reliance on manufacturing and a higher proportion of the population with middle education levels. However, we also find that the length of growth spells is strongly related to lower levels of metropolitan income inequality and to measures of social and spatial segregation, suggesting that more equitable and more integrated regions are better able to sustain growth.

Keywords

economic growth growth spells regional equity resilience social inclusion

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abdallah

Michaelson

Shah

. (2012) The Happy Planet Index 2012 Report. London: New Economics Foundation. Available at: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/assets/happy-planet-index-report.pdf.

Aghion

Caroli

García-Peñalosa

(1999) Inequality and economic growth: The perspective of the new growth theories. Journal of Economic Literature 37(4): 1615–1660.

Aguiar

Gopinath

(2007) Emerging market business cycles: The cycle is the trend. Journal of Political Economy 115(1): 69–102.

Alesina

Perotti

(1996) Income distribution, political instability, and investment. European Economic Review 40: 1203–1228.

Alesina

Rodrik

(1994) Distributive politics and economic growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 109(2): 465–490.

Allison

(2012) Survival Analysis Using SAS: A Practical Guide. Cary, NC: SAS Institute.

Bates

(2009) Gross national happiness. Asian-Pacific Economic Literature 23(2): 1–16.

Berg

Ostry

(2011) Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. Available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=24686.

Berg

Ostry

Zettelmeyer

(2012) What makes growth sustained? Journal of Development Economics 98(2): 149–166.

10.

Birdsall

Ross

Sabot

(1995) Inequality and growth reconsidered: Lessons from East Asia. The World Bank Economic Review 9(3): 477.

11.

Boushey

Hersh

(2012) The American Middle Class, Income Inequality, and the Strength of Our Economy: New Evidence in Economics. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Available at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2012/05/17/11628/the-american-middle-class-income-inequality-and-the-strength-of-our-economy/.

12.

Cooke

Morgan

(1998) The Associational Economy: Firms, Regions, and Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.

13.

Daly

Delaney

(2013) The scarring effect of unemployment throughout adulthood on psychological distress at age 50: Estimates controlling for early adulthood distress and childhood psychological factors. Social Science & Medicine 80: 19–23.

14.

Deninger

Squire

(1996) Measuring income inequality: A new database. The World Bank Economic Review 10(3): 565–591.

15.

Dolan

(1990) Local government fragmentation: Does it drive up the cost of government? Urban Affairs Review 26(1): 28–45.

16.

Dymski

Pastor

(1991) Bank lending, misleading signals, and the Latin American debt crisis. The International Trade Journal 6(2): 151–191.

17.

Eberts

Erickcek

Kleinhenz

(2006) Dashboard indicators for the northeast Ohio economy: Prepared for the fund for our economic future. Working paper 06–05. Cleveland: The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Available at: http://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedcwp/0605.html (accessed 14 August 2014).

18.

Finkelstein

(1986) A proportional hazards model for interval-censored failure time data. Biometrics 42(4): 845–854.

19.

Foster

(2012) In search of regional resilience. In: Pindus

Wial

Wolman

. (eds) Urban and Regional Policy and its Effects: Building Resilient Regions. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 24–59.

20.

Goodman

(1980) The Dynamics of Urban Growth and Politics. New York: Macmillan.

21.

Gottlieb

(2000) The effects of poverty on metropolitan area economic performance. In: Wiewel

Greenstein

(eds) Urban–Suburban Interdependence: New Directions for Research and Policy. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, pp. 21–48.

22.

Grassmueck

Shields

(2010) Does government fragmentation enhance or hinder metropolitan economic growth? Papers in Regional Science 89(3): 641–657.

23.

Hamilton

(1999) The genuine progress indicator methodological developments and results from Australia. Ecological Economics 30(1): 13–28.

24.

Hamilton

Miller

Paytas

(2004) Exploring the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the governing of metropolitan regions. Urban Affairs Review 40(2): 147–182.

25.

Hausmann

Pritchett

Rodrik

(2005) Growth accelerations. Journal of Economic Growth 10(4): 303–329.

26.

Hausmann

Rodríguez

Wagner

(2006) Growth collapses. Wesleyan Economics working paper no. 2006–024, Department of Economics, Wesleyan University, CT, USA. Available at: http://repec.wesleyan.edu/pdf/frrodriguez/2006024_rodriguez.pdf (accessed 14 August 2014).

27.

Hill

St Clair

Wial

. (2012) Economic shocks and regional economic resilience. In: Pindus

Wial

Wolman

. (eds) Urban and Regional Policy and its Effects: Building Resilient Regions. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 24–59.

28.

Jerzmanowski

(2005) Empirics of Hills, Plateaus, Mountains and Plains: A Markov-Switching Approach to Growth. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=755484.

29.

Jones

Olken

(2008) The anatomy of start-stop growth. Review of Economics and Statistics 90(3): 582–587.

30.

Kahn

(2010) The long-term labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy. Labour Economics 17(2): 303–316.

31.

Kaldor

(1977) Capitalism and industrial development: Some lessons from Britain’s experience. Cambridge Journal of Economics 1(2): 193–204.

32.

Klein

Moeschberger

(2003) Survival Analysis: Techniques for Censored and Truncated Data. New York: Springer.

33.

Kuhn

(2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

34.

Kuznets

(1955) Economic growth and income inequality. American Economic Review 45(1): 1–28.

35.

Lawn

(2003) A theoretical foundation to support the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), and other related indexes. Ecological Economics 44(1): 105–118.

36.

Levine

Frank

Dijk

(2010) Expenditure cascades. Social Science Research Network working paper 1690612. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1690612.

37.

Campbell

Fernandez

(2013) Residential segregation, spatial mismatch and economic growth across US metropolitan areas. Urban Studies 50(13): 2642–2660.

38.

Martin

Kitson

Tyler

(2012) Regional Competitiveness. London and New York: Routledge.

39.

Miller

Lee

(2009) Making sense of metropolitan regions: A dimensional approach to regional governance. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 41(1): 126–145.

40.

Mroz

Savage

(2006) The long-term effects of youth unemployment. The Journal of Human Resources XLI(2): 259–293.

41.

Oreopoulos

von Wachter

Heisz

(2012) The short- and long-term career effects of graduating in a recession. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 4(1): 1–29.

42.

Ostrom

Parks

Whitaker

(1974) Defining and measuring structural variations in interorganizational arrangements. CrossRef Listing of Deleted DOIs 4(4): 87.

43.

Pastor

(2006) Cohesion and competitiveness: Business leadership for regional growth and social equity. In: Competitive Cities in the Global Economy. Paris: OECD Publishing, pp. 393–406. Available at: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/urban-rural-and-regional-development/competitive-cities-in-the-global-economy/cohesion-and-competitiveness-business-leadership-for-regional-growth-and-social-equity_9789264027091–16-en.

44.

Pastor

Benner

(2008) Been down so long: Weak market cities and regional equity. In: McGahey

Vey

(eds) Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America’s Older Industrial Areas. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 89–118.

45.

Pastor

Mollenkopf

(2012) Struggling over strangers or receiving with resilience? The metropolitics of immigrant incorporation. In: Pindus

Wier

Wial

. (eds) Urban and Regional Policy and its Effects, Vol. 4: Building Resilient Regions. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 100–147.

46.

Pastor

Lester

Scoggins

(2009) WHY REGIONS? WHY NOW? WHO CARES? Journal of Urban Affairs 31(3): 269–296.

47.

Pastor

Jr Dreier

Grigsby

III . (2000) Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together (1st ed). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

48.

Pattillo

Gupta

(2006) Sustaining Growth Accelerations and Pro-Poor Growth in Africa. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=888064.

49.

Persson

Tabellin

(1994) Is inequality harmful for growth? American Economic Review 84(3): 600–621.

50.

Rodrik

(1999) Where did all the growth go? External shocks, social conflict, and growth collapses. Journal of Economic Growth 4(4): 385–412.

51.

Rusk

(2003) Cities without suburbs: A Census 2000 Update. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

52.

Sagar

Najam

(1998) The human development index: A critical review. Ecological Economics 25(3): 249–264.

53.

Scherer

Ross

(2009) Industrial Market Structure and Economic Performance. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1496716.

54.

Scherer

(2012) Blue truth, red truth. Time Magazine, 3 October.

55.

Scott

(1998) Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

56.

Shapiro

Varian

(1998) Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

57.

Stiglitz

(2012) The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: WW Norton and Company.

58.

Storper

(1997) The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press.

59.

Talberth

Cobb

Slattery

(2006) The Genuine Progress Indicator 2006: A Toole for Sustainable Development. San Francisco: Redefining Progress. Available at: http://web.pdx.edu/~kub/publicfiles/MeasuringWellBeing/Talberth_2006_GPI.pdf.

60.

Treuhaft

Blackwell

Pastor

(2011) America’s tomorrow: Equity is the superior growth model. Oakland, CA: PolicyLink. Available at: http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/SUMMIT_FRAMING_WEB_20120110.PDF (accessed 14 August 2014).

61.

Voith

(1998) Do suburbs need cities? Journal of Regional Science 38(3): 445–464.