Last thing is I want to give a quick shout out to my colleagues @dyligent.bsky.social and @tkemeny.bsky.social who also just published a very similar paper. Makes me confident we're all on to something here! Links to both papers:

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

But it's not just big cities. We find even larger inequalities in experience effects for expensive cities. This suggests high cost AND large populations come together to create particularly strong barriers to Black and Latinx workers accessing good jobs with high levels of upward mobility.

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Each year of experience in one of these occs increases White wages by 88 cents/hr, but only 46 and 61 cents for Black and Latinx workers. This is key, as it is these "high-skill" occs which often make big cities such great places for many to live (and offset high cost-of-living).

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This is largely explained by the far greater returns White workers get from working in occupations that have tasks which require high degrees of "abstract reasoning" and "cognitive skills" (often called "high-skill" occs), which are concentrated in big cities.

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For instance, for each year that a White worker works in a big city, their wages increase by about 42 cents/hr more than if they spent that time outside a big city - this number is about 21 and 10 cents for Black and Latinx workers. Over a career this means 1000s in annual wage inequality.

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We show that this is almost entirely explained by "experience effects" - the initial benefits of locating in a big city are not that different across race, but over time, White workers get much greater returns to each year they spend working in a big city than Black and Latinx workers.

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Not sure that I necessarily think the following is the case - but couldn’t you also interpret increased household formation as evidence of adequate supply? Households increase because there are units for them to live in. Or am I missing something here?

they should remind planners and policymakers that density is not inherently good - it has costs, and we need to be mindful of who bears those costs.

show that the relationship between changes in density and changes in inequality is higher when commute times also rise, as well as that changes in density are related to changes in commuting inequality. Should these results be taken as a case against increasing density in cities? Probably not. BUT,

childcare (which disproportionately falls on women) and a career in denser cities is particularly onerous. What explains these relationships? Other research points at ways in which the congestion costs of density may be primarily borne by women and non-White workers. Similarly, I

For race, the density-inequality relationship is primarily among workers with high-incomes, while for gender it is among women and men with low incomes. For gender, I also find density is only related to gender inequality among workers who have children, suggesting that managing

should remind planners and policymakers that density is not inherently good - it has costs, and we need to be mindful of who bears those costs.

between changes in density and changes in inequality is higher when commute times also rise, as well as that changes in density are related to changes in commuting inequality. Should these results be taken as a case against increasing density in cities? Probably not. BUT, they

(which disproportionately falls on women) and a career in denser cities is particularly onerous. What explains these relationships? Other research points at ways in which the congestion costs of density may be primarily borne by women and non-White workers. Similarly, I show that the relationship

For race, the density-inequality relationship is primarily among workers with high-incomes, while for gender it is among women and men with low incomes. For gender, I also find density is only related to gender inequality among workers who have children, suggesting that managing childcare