Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Equality of Opportunity

A group of economists headed by Raj Chetty and Emmanual Saez (two of the biggest names in the field) have undertaken the "Equality of Opportunity" project. Their work is pretty impressive and has been featured in a number of public forums. Be sure to play around with some of the interactive webpages.

Here is the webpage: Equality of Opportunity

And some of their work on economic mobility:
1) An Atlas of Upward Mobility Shows Paths out of Poverty
2) The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up
3) In Climbing the Income Ladder Location Matters






12 comments:

  1. I played around on The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up. I've grown up in Alameda County in California which is better than only about 17 percent of counties. I wasn't too surprised to see that it's better to be in Contra Costa County than in SF County or Alameda County. Where you grow up surely correlates with your income mobility.

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  2. It was interesting to actually see data of how living in a certain area can affect one’s potential earnings and how moving to a better area at a young age could boost your potential earnings. I was born and raised in Honolulu and found it even more interesting to find out that Honolulu is better than about 45% of counties in the US while the island of Hawaii was only better than about 17% of counties in the US. Going through these articles made me realize how important the issue of wage/income inequality is. I agree with the article that if the issue of income inequality is to be fixed, it must start locally.

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  3. First off I want to say that the second article on "The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up" from the New York Times was probably one of the most interesting articles I have read in awhile. I also enjoyed playing around with the "Equality of Opportunity" web site. This idea of equality of opportunity, which is dependent on the income in a county is very intriguing to me. I looked at an excel spreadsheet from the web site to look up statistics from my county, along with gauging the NY Times article to my county also. By doing this, I was able to make this issue something much more personal. I live in Marin County, California, which is known as being a very wealthy county, so I was interested to see what the article had to say. I will say that I was by no means surprised at what the statistics were, but instead I was sad because I can see these statistics being lived out through several of my friends from high school. It stated that "for the rich kids" all kids are to see a drop by $3,220 due to the fact that they grew up in Marin and don't need to work hard for money. I also have to say that I was very happy to see that for the "poor kids" there was a positive growth of $550. Overall, I find this topic to be very intriguing, and I believe that this is an issue that we need to continue to address.

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  4. The “Equality of Opportunity” study proves that the area you grow up in affects and improves your long-term outcomes. So moving to a better neighborhood with better schools is beneficial in the long run. Neighborhood change is most effective when you move at age 10 (~50%) compared to age 20 (~17%). It is interesting to see that Washington has two of the highest earnings gains in the country with Snohomish, WA (2) at +14.4% and King, WA (7) at +11.4%. In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters, it was interesting to see how hard it is to move income levels. Those same two counties in Washington only have a 10.4% chance of moving income levels. So, while people from this area might be in a favorable position to start with, their chances of becoming millionaires are low. I think this study highlights the importance of good school systems. Many of the areas in washington have good public schools, compared to other states where it is necessary for a child to attend a public school in order to get a good education.

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  6. I see the value in relocation to an environment where excellence is the norm in education, work, availability of safe places to grow and participate in extracurricular activities, etc. However, I think that we are also obligated to find what is working so well in the areas were families were relocated. Was it the opportunity to live amongst homeowners – people who were genuinely invested in the community in which they lived? Was it the availability of strong leadership within the community? Was it the access to resources to prevent things like homelessness and hunger or to treat mental health issues? In my opinion, the policy writers should be mindful of these community strengths and work to model more troubled areas after the successful ones.

    I found it interesting that children of immigrants were fairly insulated from the impacts of growing up in neighborhoods where upward mobility was markedly less likely. I think it speaks volumes to the importance of retaining familial and cultural bonds while becoming American citizens. As important as the larger environment is (availability of quality education, safe neighborhoods, etc.), it think it is at least equally important to have strong support and modeling of work ethic as well as problem resolution tactics within the family and the community families create to retain cultural heritage.

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  7. This was a very interesting read. A lot of this has always been said that where you grow up directly relates to how your future turns out but I liked seeing the numbers and research behind it. Looking at the article, The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up makes me grateful that I had the privilege to live there. It is so interesting to me that where you live when you are young has such a strong influence on your future.

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  8. I found the links to be quite interesting. In particular, I did not know that Snohomish, WA was in the top 10 percentage growth in income when growing up in that particular area. I grew up in that county, and had no idea that it was one of the top of all counties. Growing up in this county must have made me fortunate. Or did it not? This is the question that will never be answered I guess.

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  9. This chart didn't surprise me very much. Growing up in King County most of my life means being surrounded by wealth almost everywhere I go. Although, I do think this is chart is a vast oversimplification of income levels based on geographical demographics. For example, you could live in King County but if you attend a public school like Rainier Beach or Franklin you aren't entitled to the resources available at a school like Bellevue or Mercer Island. At the same time if you moved from Rainier Beach to Mercer Island the likelihood of your children growing up to have a higher income increases. This is due to factors such as class sizes, community involvement, residential safety and peer influences.

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  10. The NY Times article on the Best and Worst Places to grow up really changed my perception of my home-county. I grew up in Kootenai County, Idaho (Specifically Coeur d'Alene). Since the town was a resort town and you don't see much poverty on the streets, I had thought that Kootenai was, on average, better off than Spokane County, where I went to school for much of my life. You could see the homeless in the streets, and I guess that that really had a hand in shaping my views of Spokane growing up. However, the reality is that the two are switched. The Kootenai average is in the red and Spokane is above the average for the nation. It's fascinating because I had judged it all at face value, but when looking at the poorer parts of Spokane, I never factored in the much nicer areas, like the South Hill.

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  11. Having grown up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, this list really struck a cord. There is a lot of affluence in the area, and surrounding areas, where I live, but there is also a substantial amount of poverty. I attended public school so I was especially exposed to viewing the economic disparities firsthand. For example our school district has one specific neighborhood that stands below the poverty line. Every other neighbor in the district falls in either upper-middle class or are extremely wealthy. The low income area is separated for elementary school, but is later integrated in the middle school and high school. The lasting impacts of the early education and the economic background of the students is extremely evident. It is unfortunate that in such a well-funded school district more could not go towards helping the students from that area - especially when the majority of our high school dropouts come from there. This list, although frustrating and unfortunate, is not surprising.

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  12. There are always great opportunities available for us if we are determined. I do Forex trading with high class broker like OctaFX, so that really helps me work well since they have lovely daily market analysis which allows me to trade easier while it’s given on daily basis, so that is even more helpful and allows me to make profits consistently while it’s absolutely free to use, so for a new comer like me, it’s so much easier to use.

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