Research Highlights Article
March 1, 2019
The Poor City Population Boom
This video explains why today's fastest growing urban areas are in poorer countries.
For most of human history, urbanization has gone hand in hand with economic growth. The world’s great cities like London, New York, and Tokyo became capitals of commerce for their booming national economies. But today’s fastest growing cities are different. In the January issue of American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, authors Remi Jedwab and Dietrich Vollrath say that the emergence of poor megacities is a consequence of plummeting urban mortality rates after World War II. This mortality decline may have doubled the urbanization rates in developing countries.