PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Tom VanHeuvelen
AU  - Katherine Copas
TI  - The Geography of Polarization, 1950 to 2015
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.4.03
DP  - 2019 Sep 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 77--103
VI  - 5
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/5/4/77.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/5/4/77.full
AB  - In this article, we ask where affluent and economically insecure households reside. We examine the economic conditions of the tails of wage distributions in local areas to make sense of trends in geographical residence. Using census and American Community Survey data covering 1950 to 2015, we draw two main conclusions. From 2000 onward, economic polarization coincided with two kinds of geographic residential patterns: polarized and poor labor markets. We also find divergence in the link between geographical location and wages across the wage distribution. We question whether the concentration of affluent and poor households in polarized places signify moves to better economic opportunity by low-wage workers. Our results illustrate the geographical consequences of low-wage rent destruction and highlight implications for future work addressing geographical stratification.