Divergence of Economic Opportunity in Average Places: Pathways of Stagnation

Widening interregional inequality and growing political divides have led to a growing body of work investigating extreme cases of economic growth and decline. In contrast, our research of the U.S. urban system analyzes ‘average places’, defined as urban regions with less than 250,000 people and average income levels in 1993. This analysis focuses on places with low growth between 1993 and 2017 and complements an earlier paper that investigates high-growth average places. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we identify three trajectories of stagnation with different absent or present socio-economic and institutional conditions. These are (i) isolated manufacturing/nonspecialized towns, (ii) satellite manufacturing/non-specialized towns, and (iii) disconnecting publicsector/non-specialized towns. Our results suggest that low-growth average places are more concentrated in a limited number of trajectories than their high-growth counterparts, and that they are largely characterized by the absence of conditions, as opposed to their presence. This is not simply a consequence of deindustrialization but must be understood in combination with other context conditions.