Do Cities Improve People’s Economic Outcomes?

Seems logical, right? But in many ways: no.

I just took a 30-minute break from work and read this article in The New Yorker about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (“Big Gretch”):

How Gretchen Whitmer Made Michigan a Democratic Stronghold

Within that article, there is reference to some work from Harvard economist (!) Ed Glaeser, who argues that we reward “big-idea cities” like Boston or San Francisco, but we’ve downplayed “things get made” cities like Detroit or Youngstown in the last 20–30 years. This would roll up nicely with globalization narratives, Trump rise narratives, narratives around liberal elites, etc. So I went up and looked up some stuff about Glaeser and I found this podcast transcript from 2019.

That’s an interesting article, and bear in mind it’s from before COVID. Here’s what he says about the economic outcomes of urban kids:

And I think one of the things that’s come out of my colleagues, Raj Chetty and Nathan Hendren and John Friedman’s work on economic…