IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2008-002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Convergence in the United States: a tale of migration and urbanization

Author

Listed:
  • Riccardo DiCecio
  • Charles S. Gascon

Abstract

We use non-parametric distribution dynamics techniques to reassess the convergence of per capita personal income (PCPI) across U.S. states and across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan portions of states for the period 1969-2005. The long-run distribution of PCPI is bimodal for both states and metro/nonmetro portions. Further- more, the high income mode of the distribution across metro and nonmetro portions corresponds to the single mode of the long-run distribution across metro portions only. These results (polarization or club-convergence) are reversed when weighting by population. The long run distributions across people are consistent with convergence. Migration and urbanization are the forces behind convergence.

Suggested Citation

  • Riccardo DiCecio & Charles S. Gascon, 2008. "Convergence in the United States: a tale of migration and urbanization," Working Papers 2008-002, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2008-002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2008/2008-002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sergio J. Rey & Boris Dev, 2006. "σ‐convergence in the presence of spatial effects," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 85(2), pages 217-234, June.
    2. Durlauf, Steven N. & Johnson, Paul A. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2005. "Growth Econometrics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.),Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 555-677, Elsevier.
    3. Bernard, Andrew B. & Durlauf, Steven N., 1996. "Interpreting tests of the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-2), pages 161-173.
    4. Cletus C. Coughlin & Thomas B. Mandelbaum, 1988. "Why have state per capita incomes diverged recently?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Sep, pages 24-36.
    5. Costas Azariadis & John Stachurski, 2003. "A Forward Projection of the Cross-Country Income Distribution," KIER Working Papers 570, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    6. Gasper A. Garofalo & Steven Yamarik, 2002. "Regional Convergence: Evidence From A New State-By-State Capital Stock Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 316-323, May.
    7. Sergio J. Rey & Mark V. Janikas, 2005. "Regional convergence, inequality, and space," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 155-176, April.
    8. Danny Quah, 1993. "Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis (Now published in Scandinavian Journal of Economics 95 (4), 1993, pp.427-443.)," STICERD - Econometrics Paper Series 265, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    9. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
      • Barro, R.J. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Convergence," Papers 645, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
      • Barro, Robert J. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Scholarly Articles 3451299, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    10. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Empirics for economic growth and convergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1353-1375, June.
    11. George Hammond, 2004. "Metropolitan/non-metropolitan divergence: A spatial Markov chain approach," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 83(3), pages 543-563, July.
    12. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    13. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    14. Don J. Webber & Paul White & David O. Allen, 2005. "Income Convergence across U.S. States: An Analysis Using Measures of Concordance and Discordance," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 565-589, August.
    15. Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Economic Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    16. Quah, D., 1990. "Galton'S Fallacy And The Tests Of The Convergence Hypothesis," Working papers 552, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Huber & Gabriele Tondl, 2012. "Migration and regional convergence in the European Union," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 439-460, November.
    2. Hildegunn Stokke & Jörn Rattsö, 2011. "Income convergence, migration and geography: Distribution analysis of regions in Norway," ERSA conference papers ersa10p174, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Ganong, Peter Nathan & Shoag, Daniel W, 2012. "Why Has Regional Convergence in the U.S. Stopped?," Scholarly Articles 9361381, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Up Lim, 2016. "Regional income club convergence in US BEA economic areas: a spatial switching regression approach," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 56(1), pages 273-294, January.
    5. Ganong, Peter & Shoag, Daniel, 2017. "Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 76-90.
    6. Margherita Gerolimetto & Stefano Magrini, 2017. "A Novel Look at Long-run Convergence Dynamics in the United States," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 40(3), pages 241-269, May.
    7. J�rn Ratts� & Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2014. "Population Divergence and Income Convergence: Regional Distribution Dynamics for Norway," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(11), pages 1884-1895, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Riccardo DiCecio & Charles Gascon, 2010. "Income convergence in the United States: a tale of migration and urbanization," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(2), pages 365-377, October.
    2. Falko Juessen, 2009. "A distribution dynamics approach to regional GDP convergence in unified Germany," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 627-652, December.
    3. Werner, Daniel, 2013. "New insights into the development of regional unemployment disparities," IAB-Discussion Paper 201311, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    4. Park, Seonyoung & Shin, Donggyun, 2020. "Recent Changes in the Nature of Distribution Dynamics of US County Incomes," Working Paper Series 20926, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    5. Werner, Daniel, 2013. "Regional convergence analysis for skill-specific employment groups," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79706, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Eckey, Hans-Friedrich & Döring, Thomas & Türck, Matthias, 2006. "Convergence of regions from 23 EU member states," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 86, University of Kassel, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    7. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Fousekis, Panos, 2007. "Convergence of Relative State-level Per Capita Incomes in the United States Revisited," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 37(2), pages 1-10.
    9. Julie Le Gallo & Sandy Dall'erba, 2008. "Spatial and sectoral productivity convergence between European regions, 1975–2000," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(4), pages 505-525, November.
    10. Ghassen El-Montasser & Roula Inglesi-Lotz & Rangan Gupta, 2015. "Convergence of greenhouse gas emissions among G7 countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(60), pages 6543-6552, December.
    11. Carlos Mendez-Guerra, 2017. "Heterogeneous Growth and Regional (Di)Convergence in Bolivia: A Distribution Dynamics Approach," Economia Coyuntural,Revista de temas de perspectivas y coyuntura, Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales 'Jose Ortiz Mercado' (IIES-JOM), Facultad de Ciencias Economicas, Administrativas y Financieras, Universidad Autonoma Gabriel Rene Moreno, vol. 2(4), pages 81-108.
    12. Boris Branisa & Adriana Cardozo, 2009. "Revisiting the Regional Growth Convergence Debate in Colombia Using Income Indicators," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 194, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research, revised 21 Aug 2009.
    13. Josef Novotný, 2010. "Regionální ekonomická konvergence, divergence a další aspekty distribuční dynamiky evropských regionů v období 1992-2006 [Regional Convergence, Divergence and Other Aspects of Distributional Dynami," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2010(2), pages 166-185.
    14. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & You, Kefei & Chen, Lei, 2019. "Global and regional stock market integration in Asia: A panel convergence approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Magrini, Stefano, 2004. "Regional (di)convergence," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 62, pages 2741-2796, Elsevier.
    16. Sheila Chapman & Stefania Cosci & Loredana Mirra, 2012. "Income dynamics in an enlarged Europe: the role of capital regions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(3), pages 663-693, June.
    17. Sergio J. Rey & Mark V. Janikas, 2005. "Regional convergence, inequality, and space," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 155-176, April.
    18. Park, Seonyoung & Shin, Donggyun, 2020. "Recent Changes in the Nature of Distribution Dynamics of US County Incomes," Working Paper Series 8075, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    19. Massimiliano Affinito, 2011. "Convergence clubs, the euro-area rank and the relationship between banking and real convergence," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 809, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    20. Carlos Mendez & Mitsuhiko Kataoka, 2021. "Disparities in regional productivity, capital accumulation, and efficiency across Indonesia: A club convergence approach," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 790-809, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Migration; Internal; Income distribution;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2008-002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anna Oates (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.