Priced out? Household migration out of “superstar” US city-regions

Abstract

The high cost-of-living in “superstar” US metropolitan areas has become an area of increasing scholarly and policy concern. One question relates to whether low socioeconomic status (SES) and other historically disadvantaged residents are getting pushed out of these city-regions. To unpack what is occurring with respect to migration out of large expensive metros, I examine who is moving out of these areas in the US and where they are going. I use regression, coarsened exact matching, and latent class analysis to understand who is staying within large expensive US metros and who moves out of them, as well as what revealed preferences underlie these moves. I find evidence that lower SES households are slightly more likely to leave superstar US city-regions, though Black, Latinx, and immigrant households are less likely to leave than White and US-born households. Rather than leaving, many low SES households may instead continue to live in these areas while enduring increasingly crowded living arrangements and/or long commutes. The results also highlight substantial heterogeneity in where households go to once they move, suggesting migration out of these urban areas may be more complex than simply the push of high cost-of-living.