Location Choice in Early Adulthood: Millennials Versus Baby Boomers

This paper contributes to the literature on the effect of individual‐level characteristics on urban location choice by examining whether young people aged 25–34 with a bachelor's degree or higher are more likely to live in central cities in 2011 than in 1990. When I control for individual‐level characteristics I find that the effect of education on the probability of living in a central city remains similar across generations. This is evidence that to the extent education plays a role in the larger population of high human capital 25–34 year olds in cities in 2011, it is due to a composition effect rather than cities becoming more attractive to educated people at the margin.