Resilience from the micro perspective

Perhaps uniquely, we combine individual-level data from the American Community Survey 2005-2011 with aggregate data for small areas to examine the resilience of individuals' wages to the 2008 economic crisis. A Mincer-type wage equation, incorporating market potential and employment density, is estimated, leading to a measure of resilience based on actual wages in 2011 and on a counterfactual obtained from our wage equation. We find that individuals living in areas with a higher level of market potential are more resilient, controlling for individual-level characteristics such as education and ethnicity, indicating that both individual-specific and place-specific factors are important.