Really cool infographic: What does your county look like?

"E. Julius" (soonerfrommi) 05/04/2015 at 17:23 • Filed to: Discussion

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It’s not car related, but I found it really interesting and thought maybe some of you would as well. It displays information on the effect that growing up in a particular county has on a child’s future income. Almost every county is available, and data can be sorted by gender and parental income.

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Some observations:

Interestingly, my home county, Genesee County in Michigan, is 4th worst in the entire country for poor children. Simultaneously, it is also in the 95th percentile for boys from families in the top 1%, and about average for boys from rich families.

Also interestingly, there is an extremely sharp gender divide for rich families in my home county. About average for 75th percentile boys, TERRIBLE for 75th percentile girls. The effect is even more pronounced in the top 1%, being among the best in country for boys and one of the worst in the country for girls.

This is probably most fascinating and surprising to me: there seems to be a geographic divide for outcomes between genders. For counties in the center of the country (IA, MN, NE, KA), girls seem to be fair better than boys. The further away you get from these counties, the advantage decreases until it reverses and boys gain the advantage, with many coastal counties having terrible outcomes for girls (this effect is most pronounced in the 75th percentile range). What is driving this relationship? I’ve been racking my brain but I really have no idea.

So how does your county stack up? Any other interesting observations? Any answers to my questions?

For Sweden > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 17:25

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BRB moving to Wyoming

505Turbeaux > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 17:51

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it looks like a big box in southern CT full of money. And that is pretty much what it is. I just feel bad I have alot of friends from there that have all the outer display of success, but they clock in daily to a personality destroying job at an insurance company - within 5 years POOF! no more soul for you

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 17:53

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Think there’s anything to this about the work ethic that poorer kids in the northern midwest might be brought up with, or is this a reflection of race bias somehow?

Tulsa is somehow better for poorer kids than it is for richer kids, and significantly better for girls than for boys...

Breakfast Burrito: The True Resident Burrito > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 17:58

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davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 17:59

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“The sharpest test comes from those who won an experimental housing voucher that could be used only if they moved to low-poverty areas. Here the findings are striking, as those who moved as a result of winning this voucher before their teens went on to earn 31 percent more than those who did not win the lottery. They are also more likely to attend college. Other families were awarded Section 8 housing vouchers, which subsidize renting a house or apartment. But because they did not require the winners to move to better parts of the city, people typically moved to neighborhoods that were better but perhaps by only half as much. As a result, the eventual income gains to the preteen children who won this the lottery were about half as large.”

“The girls raised in better neighborhoods are also more likely to grow up to marry, and when they have children, are more likely to maintain a relationship with the father. They are also more likely to live in better neighborhoods as adults. This suggests that the next generation — the grandchildren of the winners of this lottery — are more likely to be raised by two parents, to enjoy higher family incomes and to spend their entire childhood in better neighborhoods. That is, the gains from this policy experiment are likely to persist over several generations.”

Interesting stuff, but I’m not sure how you can look at an entire county as a whole to get the above effects. In my county, there are neighborhoods and schools with great poverty as well as neighborhoods and schools with great wealth.

E. Julius > 505Turbeaux 05/04/2015 at 18:01

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Yep, now that my friends are starting to get out into the working world I’m seeing quite a few of them getting eaten by the yuppie machine. I’m no bohemian myself, but I could care less about most of that frivolous stuff. I don’t need (or want) a trendy downtown apartment. I could care less if I’ve tried the hot new restaurant or food of the moment. I’m perfectly fine with my old ass iPhone, and I’d rather have a quirky old used car with cash leftover to fix whatever breaks on the POS than a leased German luxobarge.

I certainly won’t grow up to be a pauper, but the sacrifices required to make that extra 20% on the salary don’t seem worth it to me. Give me my small company job, house on a lake, and nights at home with my girlfriend any day.

Maybe when we’re all 55 and I own my own business and they’re still wage slaves, I’ll toss a couple hundreds their way from the window of my vintage Porsche ; )

505Turbeaux > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:05

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lol you got it all right right there. That is why I GTFO of there and lived life instead of staying to be somebody’s bitch. Wasn’t always easy, but I preserved my sanity and uniqueness

E. Julius > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/04/2015 at 18:14

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Hmm, the race bias is certainly a possibility to explain the gender divide. I’m not so sure about the work ethic theory since the effect seems to cut across all backgrounds.

It is interesting to me thinking about why some places would be better for richer kids than others. Perhaps it has to do with how “boomy” a place is. What I mean by that is that in a place like Tulsa, where a lot of the money comes from oil & gas, there very well could have been a huge economic boom from commodities and a lot of rich families, and then when the boom slowed down their fortunes reversed (or at least declines) and so some of the rich children lost the advantages of growing up in a rich home.

By contrast, the time when the people who were studied were born and growing up was one of the worst downturns of all time in my home county. Given that, perhaps the rich families that were around then were the ones that had already weathered the worst of the storm, and so they were most able to preserve their advantages.

Was Tulsa better for girls across the whole spectrum, or just for poor families?

E. Julius > 505Turbeaux 05/04/2015 at 18:17

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I’ll drink to that. Have you been to the financial district of a major city lately? All the guys my age even wear the same bluish–purplish shirt, it’s fucking terrifying.

E. Julius > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/04/2015 at 18:23

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Yeah, I think that’s true for most counties, which certainly would confound the data a bit unless they accounted for that. I don’t know if you say, but the margin of error for the 25th percentile was ~$1100, which is pretty significant given the quantities involved. I think it’s still useful though if you compare the results with those found in more fine–grained, smaller scale studies.

For instance, the section you quoted above reminds me of research I’ve heard about the effects of poor families moving into better neighborhoods. The research has shown that this has great positive outcomes for girls, like your quote said, but neutral or negative outcomes for boys. Poor boys moved to better neighborhoods have a much harder time integrating, and are more likely to commit crimes and practice other behaviors that impede their social mobility. This seems to corroborate some of the broader conclusions of the study.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:24

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Tulsa County is pretty good for income mobility for girls in poor families . It is better than about 61 percent of counties.

Tulsa County is very bad for income mobility for boys in poor families . It is better than only about 16 percent of counties.

Tulsa County is about average for girls in families in the top 1% . It is better than about 46 percent of counties.

Tulsa County is very bad for a boys in families in the top 1% . It is better than only about 10 percent of counties.

Interestingly, Oklahoma County (OKC) is much different:

Oklahoma County is extremely good for a boys in families in the top 1% . It is among the best counties in the U.S. It’s pretty good for rich girls, but it’s very bad for poor boys and pretty bad for poor girls.

Very hard to understand what the differences can be attributed to. Thanks for the link, by the way - I did some grad work in GIS and love this kind of stuff.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:31

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Interesting, and sad for the boys...

E. Julius > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/04/2015 at 18:31

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Hey no problem, I thought it was super interesting and had to share it. The person I got it from is actually from OKC, and he commented on the same thing you did. Really interesting question, and one I definitely don’t have an answer for right now.

505Turbeaux > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:38

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yes, and if they talk to me they get an eye to match

squabbleking > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:45

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the article points out that in places where women (and people in general, one can assume) are likely to marry later (manhattan, san francisco), the stats skew against them because the survey used household income, so in places where people get married earlier the stats can’t correct for that fact so it will seem like those kids are making more money (provided both spouses are employed) even though they might individually be making less than the median. also, the numbers for children from the 1% are skewed because if a child was raised in a household with $1m+ per year growing up, they might not be working at all by age 26 (still in art school or whatever, partying using mommy and daddy’s money) thus decreasing the income numbers for that group

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 18:51

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Some of the claims in the article run counter to what I know about many of the places with good outcomes. Most of the bluer areas are very homogeneous and heavily white, but not exceptionally wealthy by national standards. In the places I came from, diversity and cost-of-living appears to have a direct relationship with poor outcomes. County by county, the ones that are most diverse and have the highest desirability have the worst rankings. One bigger city I lived in (largest in the state/region) has great outcomes in lower-population exurban counties, slightly worse in distant suburbs, then dramatically worse in the county the city is in.

I’m not sure what to make of that.

E. Julius > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/04/2015 at 18:52

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I don’t know if you’ve read any of the current material on the topic, but we’re sort of in the midst of a “boy crisis” at the moment. It seems that the style of teaching in schools is poorly suited to boys, so their academic performance lags behind that of girls. By the time they reach college age, the difference is enough that the majority of college students are women. This varies from field to field, and the effect is smaller at graduate levels, but the trends show this will only increase in the coming years.

Essentially, we had all this free productivity we unlocked as women began going to college and entering the workforce in greater numbers in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and now that most of these gains have been made we’re realizing that in a lot of ways the boys, not the girls, are holding us back.

Of course, this isn’t to say that there isn’t still a huge gender bias in our culture. I am by absolutely no means a “men’s rights activist”—quite the opposite actually—and the reality is that women are still compensated less, hold fewer leadership positions, and face many societal obstacles to career advancement, particularly in high paying fields. The point is that at least in educational terms, we have a system that makes it harder for men to reach their full potential, which is bad for everybody. Educational reforms that would result in more of these boys going to college would raise productivity, leading to broad economics gains. Unfortunately, nobody quite seems to know how to go about that yet.

E. Julius > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/04/2015 at 19:11

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I remember reading recently that this relationship has been corroborated by separate research; minorities who live in less diverse areas actually tend to have better economic outcomes than those who live in diverse areas. I’m not quite sure how to explain that, but the statistical link has been made.

I also noticed the same inverse correlation between cost of living and outcomes, and I found it curious as well. I think the key here is to remember that the data is for the place somebody grows up, not where they end up living and working. I initially thought of it in terms of myself. What would be different between me and a boy from a family in Manhattan making the same amount of money as family? What would cause me to earn more than average and him to earn less?

This led me to think of the fact that, at the same given level of income (since the income thresholds for the purposes of the study aren’t adjusted for cost of living), the lifestyles are dramatically different. If the family in Manhattan moved to where my parents live and kept the same income, their disposable income would increase dramatically. This leaves more resources to invest in the child, potentially improving the child’s own economics outcome, wherever they move to.

tl;dr incomes statistics don’t vary, cost of living does. 75th percentile lifestyle in Manhattan is like 50th percentile somewhere else.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 19:45

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I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it comes down to whether you stay or move. For example, in Wyoming you probably won’t stay near where they grew up because the chance of finding work nearby would be low, while the vast majority of the population in the US will never move more than 100 miles from where they grew up (the biggest group that does this consistently is the military). My girlfriend’s parents live within this 100-mile circle. Her grandfather still lives in the same city he was born in (but he’s the most mobile of the group, having lived elsewhere when he was in school). Her siblings, her aunts and uncles, and all of her cousins (except the one married to someone in the military) live within this distance of home. My family, overall, is only slightly more mobile than hers (again, mainly due to the military). I’m the oddball one, having lived in 5 states, 2 countries, and multiple cities in a couple of those states.

For this reason I suspect there is still some correlation here.

My theory is that diversity is bad if it allows one to avoid assimilating the dominant culture. If you are the lone member of a minority among people that are very different from you, you won’t be accepted until you blend in some, therefore these immigrants acquire the mentality, work ethic, mannerisms, speech patterns, and other difficult-to-quantify changes that make their lives more like their peers. My coworkers that grew up in the local area support my theory: Most are white, some are part-Asian, some part-Mexican, some part-Black, and they’re all universally similar in mannerisms and culture. If I just spoke with them on the phone it is highly improbable that I’d be able to identify them as anything but 20-somethings from the area. That’s probably a very good thing for outcomes.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 20:35

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Yeah, it is a concerning problem. I’d argue that more of a man’s self-worth is tied up in being a provider for his family as well, so it’s a many-faceted issue.

traderQAMobileTestAutomationMobileBoostOn > E. Julius 05/04/2015 at 21:31

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I won’t say the name but my county is between -$3,500 and -$3,400. Surprise surprise, most of it’s a total ghetto. I can’t wait to get outta here when I graduate from college.

traderQAMobileTestAutomationMobileBoostOn > For Sweden 05/04/2015 at 21:33

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Say what about getting rid of it again? Haha

E. Julius > traderQAMobileTestAutomationMobileBoostOn 05/04/2015 at 21:40

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Well the number on the info graphic that don’t mean it’s “ghetto”, but obviously you live there and know what it’s like. Leaving for school is always an enlightening experience, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

samssun > E. Julius 05/05/2015 at 08:14

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Pretty straightforward solution there: girls have a much easier time marrying up, and if you move them to a nicer area, their background is mostly irrelevant. But it’s extremely unlikely a guy will attract a better-off mate, and even girls his equivalent will be looking to marry up themselves.