Parsing Urban Poverty

Edward Glaeser examines what makes cities prosper, or fail

By Alvin Powell

Contributing Writer

Edward Glaeser grew up in the Big Apple, marveling at all New York has to offer. He explored its streets and its buildings, packed with interesting people and things. He saw whole sections of the city devoted to various cultures and ways of life, and visited its museums, libraries, theaters, and shops.

Today, Glaeser still marvels at the city. A newly promoted professor of economics, Glaeser uses the science of economics to examine the cities of the world. He takes their temperature using statistics and census data. He has probed their benefits and weaknesses, including vitality and crime, innovation and decay.

And he thinks they're doing OK.

"I am incredibly excited about cities," Glaeser said. "There is so much going on, so much economics, so much of the variety of human life in cities."

To say that they're doing OK doesn't mean cities don't have problems and that they're not facing challenges for the future. But the shoulder-to-shoulder density of cities that has historically promoted trade and the flow of ideas still appears to be promoting trade and the flow of ideas.

"The basic insight of urban economics is that cities exist to decrease the distance between economic actors," Glaeser said. "It's about eliminating the transport costs for goods, people, and ideas."

The decline of manufacturing in the United States has diminished the importance of manufacturing and the flow of goods. But cities still allow the faster flow of ideas and closer contact between people, which appears to be enough to maintain the prominence of cities.

"Eliminating the distance between ideas and people is still very important," Glaeser said. "Intellectual breakthroughs travel faster over streets and hallways than over oceans and railroads."

Jeffrey Williamson, the Laird Bell Professor of Economics and chair of the Economics Department, said Glaeser fills a need in the department left by the 1997 retirement of John Kain, who was the Henry Lee Professor of Economics, professor of Afro-American Studies, and professor of regional planning. Williamson described Glaeser as a "superb applied micro-theorist" who "keeps it simple, and powerful."

"He is unbelievably productive. By himself, he has pretty much transformed urban economics," Williamson said. "He's a terrific colleague. He's interested in anything economic."

Glaeser said he enjoys teaching both undergraduates and graduate students. He said he finds advising graduate students particularly stimulating and often co-authors papers with students.

"Undergraduates here are a real pleasure to teach," Glaeser said. "And advising graduate students is one of my favorite things to do. They're incredibly creative."

New York Born and Bred

Glaeser attributed his interest in urban areas directly to his youth in New York City, where he lived until he went to college at age 17.

"It was a fantastic intellectual playground," Glaeser said. "I often think that one purpose of my work is to understand why New York was such a special place to grow up."

Though he studied economics at Princeton, receiving an A.B. in 1988, he said it wasn't until he reached graduate school at the University of Chicago that a real excitement for the subject took hold. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1992.

Harvard was his next stop after Chicago. He was an assistant professor from 1992 to 1996 and the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy from 1996 until he was promoted to professor last July.

He has written more than 50 papers and articles on topics ranging from urban manufacturing to ghettos to term limits. He has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School in 1998, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship from 1997 to 1999, and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellowship in 1994-95. Since 1993, has held a Faculty Research Fellowship from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Poverty, Density, and Wages

Glaeser said he usually has several projects in the works. One of his current ones is an effort to determine why poverty is concentrated in American cities. One factor may be that welfare benefits and other government supports, like public housing, are usually more available or more generous in cities than in surrounding communities. As a way to lessen the concentrations of poverty in big cities, Glaeser suggests eliminating the differences in city and town welfare programs.

Glaeser sees cities as places where people learn. In his 1998 paper "Are Cities Dying?," published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Glaeser says more and more people in the United States are choosing to live in cities. In 1970, approximately 41 percent of Americans lived in cities with population of more than 1 million. In 1990, that figure was 48.1 percent.

American cities are centers of culture and productivity, with workers in metropolitan areas surrounding a city of more than 500,000 earning 10 percent more than workers in metropolitan areas without a big city and 34 percent more than workers outside of metropolitan areas.

Glaeser attributes this increased earning power to the learning opportunities presented by cities, which allow workers to continually invest in their own "human capital."

"I believe that the death of the city is far from imminent," Glaeser wrote. "The demand for interaction is certainly rising and face-to-face interaction is not close to being supplanted by its electronic competitors. Few of the costs of urban life appear to be rising too dramatically. However, unless particular policy choices are implemented, it appears likely that many older cities will continue their decline into becoming decrepit centers of poverty."

Glaeser said his interest in cities remains one of intellectual fascination. When he sees urban leaders making what he might consider a bad policy, instead of wanting to rail against it, he is interested in finding out what is behind the policy.

"When I see a bad policy being done, I think, 'That's interesting, why are they doing that strange policy?' " he said.

In addition to his examination of urban areas, Glaeser said he's interested in using the tools of economics to look at topics not normally associated with the subject, such as religion and politics.

"One of the things I'm really excited about is extending the reach of economics," Glaeser said. "I see economics as only marginally having to do with money. I see it as a scientific way to look at society."