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Title: The Effect of Childhood Urban Residency on Earnings: Evidence from Brazil

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2022

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DOI: 10.2139/SSRN.3859527

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Abstract: Despite the large urban-rural income gap across the developing world, it remains unclear to what degree this reflects the causal effect of urban residency. This paper presents new evidence by investigating the effect of urban residency during childhood on economic outcomes in adulthood. Causal identification is obtained from an age-at-move design combined with high-quality Brazilian census data. The analysis shows that spending childhood in an environment one log-point denser increases adulthood earnings and wages by 2 - 3 percent. Around half of this effect is due to an increase in educational attainment. The findings suggest that the previous literature, by exclusively focusing on urban exposure during adulthood, has underestimated the causal effect of urban residency on earnings by 50%.

Url: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3859527

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Authors: Maarseveen, Raoul van

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Pages: 1-44

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Data Collections: IPUMS International

Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization, Poverty and Welfare

Countries: Brazil