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This article examines the role of work at the cutting of technological change—frontier work—as a driver of prosperity and spatial income inequality. Using new methods and data, we analyze the geography and incomes of frontier workers from 1880 to 2019. Initially, frontier work is concentrated in a set of ‘seedbed’ locations, contributing to rising spatial inequality through powerful localized wage premiums. As technologies mature, the economic distinctiveness of frontier work diminishes, as ultimately happened to cities like Manchester and Detroit. Our work uncovers a plausible general origin story of the unfolding of spatial income inequality.

 

We document that children growing up in places left behind by today’s economy experience lower levels of social mobility as adults. Using a longitudinal database that tracks over 20,000 places in the USA from 1980 to 2018, we identify two kinds of left behind places: the ‘long-term left behind’ that have struggled over long periods of history; and ‘recently left-behind’ places where conditions have deteriorated. Compared to children of similar baseline household income levels, we find that exposure to left behind places is associated with a 4-percentile reduction in adult income rank. Children fare considerably better when exposed to places where conditions are improving. These outcomes vary across prominent social and spatial categories and are compounded when nearby places are also experiencing hardship. Based on these findings, we argue that left behind places are having ‘scarring effects’ on children that could manifest long into the future, exacerbating the intergenerational challenges faced by low-income households and communities. Improvements in local economic conditions and outmigration to more prosperous places are, therefore, unlikely to be full remedies for the problems created by left behind places.

 

Information about grants funded by NSF to support SES research from 2000-2015. The grants included in this dataset are a subset that we identified as having an SES research focus from a set of grants accessed using the Dimensions platform (https://dimensions.ai). CSV file with 35 columns and names in header row: "Grant Searched" lists the granting NSF program (text); "Grant Searched 2" lists a secondary granting NSF program, if applicable (text); "Grant ID" is the ID from the Dimensions platform (string); "Grant Number" is the NSF Award number (integer); "Number of Papers (NSF)" is the count of publications listed under "PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH" in the NSF Award Search page for the grant (integer); "Number of Pubs Tracked" is the count of publications from "Number of Papers (NSF)" included in our analysis (integer); "Publication notes" are our notes about the publication information. We used "subset" to denote when a grant was associated with >10 publications and we used a random sample of 10 publications in our analysis (text); "Unique ID" is our unique identifier for each grant in the dataset (integer); "Collaborative/Cross Program" denotes whether the grant was submitted as part of a set of collaborative or cross-program proposals. In this case, all linked proposals are given the same unique identifier and treated together in the analysis. (text); "Title" is the title of the grant (text); "Title translated" is the title of the grant translated to English, where applicable (text); "Abstract" is the abstract of the grant (text); "Abstract translated" is the abstract of the grant translated to English, where applicable (text); "Funding Amount" is the numeric value of funding awarded to the grant (integer); "Currency" is the currency associated with the field "Funding Amount" (text); "Funding Amount in USD" is the numeric value of funding awarded to the grant expressed in US Dollars (integer); "Start Date" is the start date of the grant (mm/dd/yyyy); "Start Year" is the year in which grant funding began (year); "End Date" is the end date of the grant (mm/dd/yyyy); "End Year" is the year in which the term of the grant expired (year); "Researchers" lists the Principal Investigators on the grant in First Name Last Name format, separated by semi-colons (text); "Research Organization - original" gives the affiliation of the lead PI as listed in the grant (text); "Research Organization - standardized" gives the affiliation of each PI in the list, separated by semi-colons (text); "GRID ID" is a list of the unique identifier for each the Research Organization in the Global Research Identifier Database [https://grid.ac/?_ga=2.26738100.847204331.1643218575-1999717347.1643218575], separated by semi-colons (string); "Country of Research organization" is a list of the countries in which each Research Organization is located, separated by semi-colons (text); "Funder" gives the NSF Directorate that funded the grant (text); "Source Linkout" is a link to the NSF Award Search page with information about the grant (URL); "Dimensions URL" is a link to information about the grant in Dimensions (URL); "FOR (ANZSRC) Categories" is a list of Field of Research categories [from the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) system] associated with each grant, separated by semi-colons (string); "FOR [1-5]" give the FOR categories separated. "NOTES" provide any other notes added by the authors of this dataset during our processing of these data. 

Information about individual publications associated with grants funded by NSF to support SES research from 2000-2015 (see "SES grants, 2000-2015"). For grants with ten or fewer publications, we included information about all available publications in this dataset. For grants with more than ten publications, we randomly selected ten to include in this dataset. CSV file with 13 columns and names in header row: "Grant ID" is the ID from the Dimensions platform (string); "Grant Number" is the NSF Award number (integer); "Publication Title" is the title of the paper (text); "Publication Year" is the year in which the paper was published (year); "Authors" is a list or abbreviated list of the authors of the paper (text); "Journal" is the name of the scientific journal or outlet in which the paper is published (text); "Interdis Rubric 1" is a metric representing the dataset authors' assessment for the level of interdisciplinarity represented by the paper (integer: “1” indicated social and natural science interdisciplinarity where both social and environmental conditions are measured or explored and/or author affiliations included departments across these disciplines; “2” indicated general interdisciplinarity between two or more different fields (that may both be within natural or social science); and “3” indicated single-disciplinarity) "Citations" is the count of citations the paper had received as of the date listed in "date for cite count", as reported in Google Scholar (integer); "date for cite count" is the date on which citation count for the paper was obtained (ddBBByy); "Abstract" is the text of the abstract of the paper, where available (text); "Notes" are any notes added by the authors of the dataset (text). 

Most cities in the United States of America are thought to have followed similar development trajectories to evolve into their present form. However, data on spatial development of cities are limited prior to 1970. Here we leverage a compilation of high-resolution spatial land use and building data to examine the evolving size and form (shape and structure) of US metropolitan areas since the early twentieth century. Our analysis of building patterns over 100 years reveals strong regularities in the development of the size and density of cities and their surroundings, regardless of timing or location of development. At the same time, we find that trajectories regarding shape and structure are harder to codify and more complex. We conclude that these discrepant developments of urban size- and form-related characteristics are driven, in part, by the long-term decoupling of these two sets of attributes over time.

 

Losses from natural hazards are escalating dramatically, with more properties and critical infrastructure affected each year. Although the magnitude, intensity, and/or frequency of certain hazards has increased, development contributes to this unsustainable trend, as disasters emerge when natural disturbances meet vulnerable assets and populations. To diagnose development patterns leading to increased exposure in the conterminous United States (CONUS), we identified earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, and wildfire hazard hotspots, and overlaid them with land use information from the Historical Settlement Data Compilation data set. Our results show that 57% of structures (homes, schools, hospitals, office buildings, etc.) are located in hazard hotspots, which represent only a third of CONUS area, and ∼1.5 million buildings lie in hotspots for two or more hazards. These critical levels of exposure are the legacy of decades of sustained growth and point to our inability, lack of knowledge, or unwillingness to limit development in hazardous zones. Development in these areas is still growing more rapidly than the baseline rates for the nation, portending larger future losses even if the effects of climate change are not considered.

 

We discuss data quality and modeling issues inherent in the use of nationwide property data to value environmental amenities. By example of ZTRAX, a U.S.-wide real estate database, we identify challenges and propose guidance for: (1) the identification of arm’s-length sales, (2) the geo-location of parcels and buildings, (3) temporal linkages between transaction, assessor, and parcel data, (4) the identification of property types, such as single-family homes and vacant lands, and (5) dealing with missing or mismeasured data for standard housing attributes. We review current practice and show that how researchers address these issues can meaningfully influence research findings.