IN APRIL, a Metro PCS mobile phone shop at the corner of 7th Street and Florida Avenue in the Shaw district of Washington, DC, briefly silenced its speakers. For 24 years, the shop, which also sells music CDs, had played go-go music, a kind of funk indigenous to the city, to passers-by. Some would stop to bop. But, according to the store owner, a resident of a new nearby luxury apartment complained about the noise—and his corporate overseers turned the volume down.

The incident amplified a rumbling debate over the impact of gentrification in a city that has seen rapid economic and demographic change—according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the most widespread gentrification of any major metro area in the country. A three bedroom house around the corner from the Metro PCS sold for $345,000 in 2004 and resold for $835,116 in 2017. The property is advertised as perfect for a “group house of young professionals.”

Gentrification is usually thought of as a positive for cities as a whole, but a problem for longer term residents of gentrifying areas: they are displaced by higher rents or increasingly alienated from their changing community. A new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia by Davin Reed and Quentin Brummet, economists, suggests that the benefits of gentrification may be more widespread, and the harms less common, than usually supposed.

The authors studied the residents of low-income central city neighbourhoods of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, tracking individuals who responded to both the census of 2000 and a rolling series of community surveys carried out between 2010 and 2014. That allowed them to follow changes in outcomes for movers and non-movers alike. They create a measure of gentrification based on the change in the neighbourhood population aged 25 or more with a bachelor’s degree. Looking at the top 10% of gentrifying neighbourhoods, the authors found an average 37% rise in the number of college graduates in the 2010-14 period compared to the total neighbourhood population in 2000.

The analysis suggests the direct economic impact of gentrification is muted on those who leave as well as those who stay. Neither group see significant changes in terms of employment, income or commuting distance. Leavers do not move to observably worse neighbourhoods. Original homeowners who stay see rising property values while college-educated renters who stay end up paying higher rents, but this is not true of less-educated renters who stay. And while gentrification does increase out-migration, it does not do so by very much. The biggest impact is on less-educated renters—who see an increase of four to six percentage points in their cross-neighbourhood migration. But this is compared to a baseline migration rate in non-gentrifying neighbourhoods of 70-80%.

The paper also suggests there might be positive effects of gentrification for the children of original residents. Those who stay benefit from reduced exposure to neighbourhood poverty—a seven percentage point drop. And children in households that remain also benefit from exposure to higher employment and education levels. There is some evidence that children in the households of those who stay are more likely to attend and complete college.

Studies by Raj Chetty, an economist, have demonstrated the importance of neighbourhood characteristics to children; it can affect rates of imprisonment and incomes levels. They show that moving to a better neighbourhood can have a powerful life-long effect. This new research suggests that an improving neighbourhood might have similar impacts on non-movers.

Gentrifying neighbourhoods see climbing populations—moving in is a far bigger phenomenon than moving out. And that suggests the importance of building more housing as a tool to ensure current residents can benefit from future growth. Rental subsidies targeted at low-income families with children could help maximize the benefit of increased dynamism on future generations.

In Shaw, church-owned affordable housing has reduced the outflow of older residents. Nonetheless, a neighbourhood that was 87% black in 1970 was just 30% black in 2010. Older residents have lost battles to keep parking for a Baptist church, as well as keep out bike share facilities and dog parks. Derek Hyrax, an urban planner and former community organiser in the neighbourhood, suggests the result has been “resentment and alienation” at least for some long-standing residents. But not every battle has been lost. Two weeks after the go-go music was silenced, as #DontMuteDC trended on Twitter and 61,000 people signed a petition in support of the shop, the chief executive of T-Mobile, which owns Metro PCS, appeared to change course. He tweeted that “the music should NOT stop in D.C.” The speakers were cranked up once again.