Going separate ways: spatial sorting by education, work, and real income in the USA since 1970

A growing literature within economic geography has been documenting the increas- ing skill and wage polarization within and across metropolitan areas in the US. This work has provided evidence that skill-biased technological changes in the second half of the 20th century made way to a significant upwards shift in the demand coupled with productivity gains for high-skill, college-educated, workers. These changes have not, however, unfolded uniformly across space. High skill workers have been increas- ingly concentrating in large metropolitan areas where higher housing costs are more than compensated by premiums in their wage. Such areas seemingly do not offer the same benefits to low-skill workers working in more ubiquitous, non-tradeable in- dustries, and burdened by high rents. The bipartite division of skill groups in most research has, however, largely obscured the realities of ‘middle class’ America; where they live; who they live with; the evolution of their real incomes and well being com- pared to other groups. In this study, we look at long-term changes in the spatial distribution of three skill groups and observe an important shift in the geography of medium-skill workers, which have gradually separated away from high-skill workers and grown in relative importance in smaller non-coastal areas, where increases in general income and housing costs have been more limited. From a regional perspec- tive, we identify a large set places that are dominated by the middle-skilled and discuss their general characteristics.