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New research suggests that Walmart makes the communities it operates in poorer

New research suggests that the company makes the communities it operates in poorer—even taking into account its famous low prices.

In that sense, its dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. In 2005, Jason Furman, who would go on to chair Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, published a paper titled “Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story.” In it, he argued that although Walmart pays its workers relatively low wages, “the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison” with how much it saved them at the grocery store. The first, posted in September by the social scientists Lukas Lehner and Zachary Parolin and the economists Clemente Pignatti and Rafael Pintro Schmitt, draws on a uniquely detailed dataset that tracks a wide range of outcomes for more than 18,000 individuals across the U.S. going back to 1968.

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