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By Jordan Rappaport |
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Abstract U.S. residents have been moving en masse to places with nice weather. Well known is the migration towards places with warm winters, which is often attributed to the introduction of air conditioning. But people have also been moving to places with cooler, less-humid summers, which is the opposite of what is expected from the introduction of air conditioning. Nor can the movement to nice weather be primarily explained by shifting industrial composition or by elderly migration. Instead, a large portion of weather-related moves appear to be the result of an increased valuation of nice weather as a consumption amenity, probably due to broad-based rising per capita income. Keywords: Economic Growth, Population Density, Migration, Quality of Life JEL Codes: N920, O510, R110, R120, R230 Jordan Rappaport is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The author would like to thank Jonathan Willis and Steven Durlauf for advice and suggestions and Michael Haines for sharing historical census data. He also thanks Taisuke Nakata and Aarti Singh for excellent research assistance. A number of other individuals have also made large contributions to the construction of the underlying data including Nathaniel Baum Snow, Scott Benolkin, Anne Berry, Krista Jacobs, Jason Martinek, Peter Northup, Chris Yenkey, and Andrea Zanter. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or the Federal Reserve System. Comments warmly appreciated.Rappaport e-mail: jordan.m.rappaport@kc.frb.org |
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