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The Increasing Importance of Quality of Life By Jordan Rappaport |
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Abstract The U.S. population has been migrating to places with
high perceived quality of life. With homothetic preferences, such migration
can follow from the increased demand for amenities that accompanies
broad-based technological progress. Under the baseline calibration of a
general equilibrium model, a place with amenities for which individuals
would initially pay five percent of their income grows slightly faster than
an otherwise identical place. As quality of life becomes more important in
determining relative population density, productivity independently becomes
less important. Asymptotically, local amenities are the sole determinant of
relative density. High quality of life together with low relative
productivity can boost metropolitan population growth by several percentage
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