Government Land Use Regulations Increase Income Inequality

(p. A1) . . . a growing body of economic literature suggests that anti-growth sentiment, when multiplied across countless unheralded local development battles, is a major factor in creating a stagnant and less equal American economy.
It has even to some extent changed how Americans of different incomes view opportunity. Unlike past decades, when people of different socioeconomic backgrounds tended to move to similar areas, today, less-skilled workers often go where jobs are scarcer but housing is cheap, instead of heading to places with the most promising job opportunities, according to research by Daniel Shoag, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and Peter Ganong, (p. B2 [sic]) also of Harvard.
. . .
“To most people, zoning and land-use regulations might conjure up little more than images of late-night City Council meetings full of gadflies and minutiae. But these laws go a long way toward determining some fundamental aspects of life: what American neighborhoods look like, who gets to live where and what schools their children attend.
And when zoning laws get out of hand, economists say, the damage to the American economy and society can be profound. Studies have shown that laws aimed at things like “maintaining neighborhood character” or limiting how many unrelated people can live together in the same house contribute to racial segregation and deeper class disparities. They also exacerbate inequality by restricting the housing supply in places where demand is greatest.
The lost opportunities for development may theoretically reduce the output of the United States economy by as much as $1.5 trillion a year, according to estimates in a recent paper by the economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti. Regardless of the actual gains in dollars that could be achieved if zoning laws were significantly cut back, the research on land-use restrictions highlights some of the consequences of giving local communities too much control over who is allowed to live there.
“You don’t want rules made entirely for people that have something, at the expense of people who don’t,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

For the full story, see:
CONOR DOUGHERTY. “When Cities Spurn Growth, Equality Suffers.” The New York Times (Mon., July 4, 2016): A1 & B2 [sic].
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 3, 2016, and has the title “How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality.”)

The paper mentioned above by Ganong and Shoag, is:
Ganong, Peter, and Daniel Shoag. “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?” Working Paper, Jan. 2015.

The paper mentioned above by Hsieh and Moretti, is:
Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Enrico Moretti. “Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth.” National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper # 21154, May 2015.

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