On the Geography of Demography: Why Women Live in Cities
Young women go to prosperous areas, leaving economically backward places with a deficit of fertile women. This phenomenon is common throughout the developed world. The proposed reason is that women have two sources of income: men and work, and both the good men and the good jobs tend to be in cities. Urban sex-ratios (men to women) may be further depressed if married women drop out of the labor force and women in good jobs drop out of marriage. The paper presents Swedish municipality level data supporting the argument.