2. Take Fall River, MA. In 1900, it was the 33rd largest city in the country, thriving on textiles, with a pop of 105k. Today, it has only 94k. The textile mills moved south at the beginning of the 20th century, and the city has never wholly rebounded.
3. But if you think about the people, and not just the place, it's a much less grim story. Instead of remaining the 33rd largest city—which today, would mean 550k people—but being devoid of jobs, the city shrank as people pursued opportunity.
4. So I think there's strong empirical support for the claim that mobility allowed us to absorb previous economic shocks and waves of deindustrialization, and that today, the lack of mobility has significantly worsened these effects.
5. And often as you say, that means that places are eventually able to rebound. Sometimes, they don't. But either way, the _people_ who were born in places in decline fare better, over the course of their lives, for being able to choose where to live.
Thank you for the thorough reply! Both of us (and Russ Roberts who has a new Econtalk episode on international trade 101) care first and foremost about the people. To wit, I was being unclear. By rebound I was trying to say, "The people are somewhat OK, even the ones who remain."
To stick with River Falls, it seems to be doing OK, not amazing, not horribly. The big point as you say is that when its mills closed, its people had options. What was our 33rd city carried on while becoming a smaller part of the country's story. Not a tragedy, just part of having a dynamic economy.
