Expensive Cities Are Even Worse for the Poor Than You Think

High-skilled jobs and the people who get paid handsomely to hold them are increasingly clustered in coastal cities where, not surprisingly, it now costs an insane amount of money to live. Take, as evidence, the astronomical rent in places like New York City and San Francisco: It costs more to sleep at night in these cities because more people want to be there in proximity to opportunity, and that high price also means that anyone other than the high-income can't afford to get in.

A curious thing happens, though, when the rent goes up (alongside it the barriers for other people to move in). As Catherine Rampell writes today in the New York Times, when when high-skilled, high-wage professionals congregate in cities, some of their other expenses actually go down, while – and here's the rub – it gets more expensive for low-income people to buy consumer goods like their groceries.