Fig. 5. The social gradient of urban scaling.

(A) The highly educated (per-capita scaling parameter β = 0.070 ± 0.037) and those with high cognitive ability (β = 0.054 ± 0.013) benefit most from living in urban environments. We split the study population into three groups consisting of those with relatively little (<25th percentile), intermediate (25th to 75th percentile), or high (>75th percentile) education or ability, respectively. The vertical lines indicate 95% confidence intervals and the dashed line represents the net-agglomeration effect β = 0.028 ± 0.009 from Fig. 3C. (B) Long-term urban wage premium is smallest for the least-educated (+17.0% ± 2.7%) and the least-able (+25.3% ± 4.3%), who thus benefit least from moving into urban environments. The dashed line is the unconditional long-term urban wage premium averaged over the trajectories shown in Fig. 4A.