Audio version of "The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash" a research paper by Will Wilkinson, Vice President for Research at the Niskanen Center

Executive Summary

►	Urbanization sorts populations on attributes—ethnicity, personality, and education—that make individuals more or less responsive to the incentives to move toward cities. 

►	Self-selected migration has segregated the national population and concentrated economic production into megacities, driving a polarizing wedge between dense diverse populations and sparse white populations—the “density divide.” 

►	The filtering/sorting dynamic of urbanization has produced a lower-density, mainly white population that is increasingly uniform in socially conservative personality, aversion to diversity, relative disclination to migrate and seek higher education, and Republican Party loyalty. 

►	Related urban-rural economic divergence has put many lower-density areas in dire straits, activating a zero-sum, ethnocentric mindset receptive to scapegoating populist rhetoric about the threat of “un-American” immigrants, minorities, and liberal elites who dwell in relatively prosperous multicultural cities. 

►	The low-density bias of our electoral system enabled Trump to win with majority support in areas that produce just 1/3 of GDP and contain less than 1/2 the population.

The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash by Will Wilkinson

Niskanen Center

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