Over the past couple of decades, there has been a shift in some major cities. The total metropolitan populations for cities like Los Angeles and Chicago have been relatively flat, and in other areas, like Detroit and Cleveland, there has been a decline. On the other hand, Atlanta's population is growing fast, as well as Orlando's, and the curious thing is both of these cities are prospering. The now common wisdom that has been forming in the last couple decades suggests that stagnating population is met with a similar kind of economy.
But is this the case? Must you have population growth to have economic growth?
A few years back, Paul Gottlieb, an economist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, set out to probe this question further. He found that almost half of the largest metro areas in the country did not fall into quick categories like one would assume. There was another more interesting breakdown, as he found out. There seems to be two kinds of cities, "wealth builders" like Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis that saw income go up faster than population and "population magnets," which saw the reverse.
This article goes on to explain the rest of the findings,
What is the difference between these cities and the ones that had both low rates of population increase and little economic growth? That is, places such as Buffalo, Hartford, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and Charleston, West Virginia. After all, both groups of cities have lower educational attainment and strong manufacturing bases. Even more baffling, why are some of these gritty, non-dazzling metropolitan areas doing better on Gottlieb's "growth without growth" index than supposed superstars such as Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas and Orlando?
The answer appears to be that not adding population has some benefits. First, much of the nation's population growth in recent years has been driven by immigration, and recent immigrants pull down the overall per-capita income. And second, many of the fastest-growing metros — Las Vegas and Orlando among them — have parlayed climate and raw land into a tourism-based economy, which tends to create low-wage jobs.
The "growth without growth" champs, such as St. Louis and Pittsburgh, may experience higher levels of educational attainment and high-tech employment — more than Buffalo and Cleveland, and, at the same time, more than Las Vegas and Orlando.
