6 ms·

High-School Dropouts and College Grads Are Moving to Very Different Places

53 points by gregrata 12y ago

ars 12y ago
This is a very interesting topic, but unfortunately the information is marred by a very poor presentation. Is that really the best way he could think of to present that data? Both the chart and the map are virtually unreadable if you want to get an idea of the movement patterns in relation to education. And it doesn't help that it's not scaled by the size of the cities, instead showing the absolute number of the change.
- drewblaisdell 12y ago
  > Both the chart and the map are virtually unreadable if you want to get an idea of the movement patterns in relation to education. I think this map does a fine job of showing movement patterns in relation to education: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migrat...
  - ars 12y ago
    > I think this map does a fine job of showing movement patterns in relation to education It most definitely does not. It does a mediocre job of showing movement patterns, and a terrible job of relating them to education. To show movement patterns it needs to show relative change, not absolute change. To show education changes it needs a completely different format. (And that's not a map.)
- nilkn 12y ago
  Wouldn't scaling by the size of the cities make it even harder to judge where people are actually going or moving away from? Maybe you're looking for something different in the data than I am, but it seems like that would obscure the most important numbers.
  - ars 12y ago
    It depends on what you do. If you are coloring the whole US by movement then use the absolute values. But if you are making a chart, or making circles then you have to. To see this, look at a large-circle city. Now imagine that same city has two neighborhoods, and you list them separately, now suddenly your large circle becomes two small circles, or the top-ranking city on your chart is suddenly a middling city Yet nothing actually changed in how people move!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vxNsr 12y ago
This really just seems to imply that people are moving south...
- brwnll 12y ago
  More accurately: people are fleeing the North East.
  - DougWebb 12y ago
    If you look at a map of population density, the North East, as a region, has the highest density. (LA is probably similar, but it's a much smaller area.) You can look at this two ways: one is pure physics... particles in a high pressure zone tend to move towards a low pressure zone. In human terms, people can be moving from more-crowded to less-crowded. That may not be the only reason, but the density gradient is high enough that this could be a significant factor that clouds other factors. The other way to look at it is that there are simply more people in the North East who are moving at any given time, and it's likely that there are more people moving out of the region at any time than there are people moving out of less dense regions. That can make it look like a significant flight from the NE, when really it's a random bias effect of the relative densities.
    - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
      In 30 years there will be nowhere left to run. If current rates of immigration continue we're looking at over 400 million crammed in. Everywhere will be congested and expensive.
      - lotharbot 12y ago
        400 million in a country the size of the US is not exactly "crammed in". There are plenty of congested and expensive places, mostly big coastal cities. If your view of "everywhere" only includes those places, then it will seem like "everywhere" is congested and expensive. But if you ever drive across Wyoming, Texas, Montana, or Kansas, you'll see plenty of wiiiiiiiide open space too. $50k will get you a decent house in small-town Kansas.
kingnight 12y ago
I'm curious why Los Angeles has an increase in Bachelor degrees but a significant decrease in levels above and below. The article doesn't address that, only noting: > [...] immigrants continue to flow into places like New York and Los Angeles. But these places are seeing a net loss of Americans of all education levels. > San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami all saw their ranks of educated residents grow and less educated residents shrink.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  Cost of living would be my guess.
colmvp 12y ago
That seems like a staggering amount of people leaving New York.
- seizethecheese 12y ago
  NYC is very large so will look disproportionately more affected when comparison is expressed in absolute values. I'd be curious to see these numbers per capita.
  - rkuykendall-com 12y ago
    To further this point 30k/nyc pop is about equal to 10k / Chicago pop, making them about equal per-capita. And yet Chicago looks like a much smaller migration.
- rectangletangle 12y ago
  This surprised me too. Anyone from New York care to comment?
  - Mz 12y ago
    I am not from New York. But I immediately thought of this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904567
  - Tiksi 12y ago
    I feel like this could be due to how they define 'New York Metro'. I see a lot of people (myself included) moving out of New York City proper and moving to much much cheaper areas like New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County, etc. This is especially true for recent college grads who simply cannot afford to live comfortably in the city while working at an "entry level" job. I feel like many of us in the tech sector forget this since we,overall, have a decent starting salary in our field, and the "First job out of college" is frequently not the first job in the industry. In other industries the your first job will pay not too much over minimum wage, especially if the field isn't competitive. So while the data may show people leaving New York, it may not tell the whole picture. My own experience shows otherwise, though I am aware that anecdotes are not data. People may be moving out of New York City, but they aren't leaving New York City.
AnimalMuppet 12y ago
Hmm. Separating Los Angeles and Riverside seemed pretty strange to me. I mean, yes, they're 60 miles apart, but in the LA basin, people commute that far all the time.
- rudimental 12y ago
  If Cupertino and Marin are considered the same, and Tracy and San Francisco, I would agree. But they are very different places to be in, LA and Riverside.
- jmccree 12y ago
  They are probably using MSA instead of PSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_areas_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_are... .
imaginenore 12y ago
What a horrible chart http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migrat... Three shades of blue, thick white borders around bars, I can barely see the colors.
Strilanc 12y ago
The interactive visualization is focused on net migration, but the article is focused on differences in migration based on education. Is there a place I can get the raw data?
danielsju6 12y ago
This seems horribly flawed, it's counting students moving out; all of the large "university cities" are negative.
WildUtah 12y ago
This map is useless. It shows net domestic migration, but has no information on international arrivals. New York is growing even as the map says it's shrinking because it's the number one destination of foreign immigrants. We'd need to know a lot about foreign migration levels and education to make the kind of conclusions people are proposing from this map.
Thriptic 12y ago
I really question their methods. The Boston area for example has exploded with biotech and finance companies over the last 10-15 years, and high tech and big pharma have moved in as well more recently. People are also constantly complaining about lack of affordable housing, which would lead me to believe that lesser educated people are being priced out of the market and are likely leaving, not coming in droves. Their findings also very conveniently align with the overall views of the Atlantic.

53 points by gregrata 12y ago

ars 12y ago

This is a very interesting topic, but unfortunately the information is marred by a very poor presentation. Is that really the best way he could think of to present that data? Both the chart and the map are virtually unreadable if you want to get an idea of the movement patterns in relation to education. And it doesn't help that it's not scaled by the size of the cities, instead showing the absolute number of the change.

drewblaisdell 12y ago
> Both the chart and the map are virtually unreadable if you want to get an idea of the movement patterns in relation to education. I think this map does a fine job of showing movement patterns in relation to education: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migrat...
- ars 12y ago
  > I think this map does a fine job of showing movement patterns in relation to education It most definitely does not. It does a mediocre job of showing movement patterns, and a terrible job of relating them to education. To show movement patterns it needs to show relative change, not absolute change. To show education changes it needs a completely different format. (And that's not a map.)
nilkn 12y ago
Wouldn't scaling by the size of the cities make it even harder to judge where people are actually going or moving away from? Maybe you're looking for something different in the data than I am, but it seems like that would obscure the most important numbers.
- ars 12y ago
  It depends on what you do. If you are coloring the whole US by movement then use the absolute values. But if you are making a chart, or making circles then you have to. To see this, look at a large-circle city. Now imagine that same city has two neighborhoods, and you list them separately, now suddenly your large circle becomes two small circles, or the top-ranking city on your chart is suddenly a middling city Yet nothing actually changed in how people move!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vxNsr 12y ago

This really just seems to imply that people are moving south...

brwnll 12y ago
More accurately: people are fleeing the North East.
- DougWebb 12y ago
  If you look at a map of population density, the North East, as a region, has the highest density. (LA is probably similar, but it's a much smaller area.) You can look at this two ways: one is pure physics... particles in a high pressure zone tend to move towards a low pressure zone. In human terms, people can be moving from more-crowded to less-crowded. That may not be the only reason, but the density gradient is high enough that this could be a significant factor that clouds other factors. The other way to look at it is that there are simply more people in the North East who are moving at any given time, and it's likely that there are more people moving out of the region at any time than there are people moving out of less dense regions. That can make it look like a significant flight from the NE, when really it's a random bias effect of the relative densities.
  - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
    In 30 years there will be nowhere left to run. If current rates of immigration continue we're looking at over 400 million crammed in. Everywhere will be congested and expensive.
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      400 million in a country the size of the US is not exactly "crammed in". There are plenty of congested and expensive places, mostly big coastal cities. If your view of "everywhere" only includes those places, then it will seem like "everywhere" is congested and expensive. But if you ever drive across Wyoming, Texas, Montana, or Kansas, you'll see plenty of wiiiiiiiide open space too. $50k will get you a decent house in small-town Kansas.

kingnight 12y ago

I'm curious why Los Angeles has an increase in Bachelor degrees but a significant decrease in levels above and below. The article doesn't address that, only noting: > [...] immigrants continue to flow into places like New York and Los Angeles. But these places are seeing a net loss of Americans of all education levels. > San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami all saw their ranks of educated residents grow and less educated residents shrink.

mkr-hn 12y ago
Cost of living would be my guess.

colmvp 12y ago

That seems like a staggering amount of people leaving New York.

seizethecheese 12y ago
NYC is very large so will look disproportionately more affected when comparison is expressed in absolute values. I'd be curious to see these numbers per capita.
- rkuykendall-com 12y ago
  To further this point 30k/nyc pop is about equal to 10k / Chicago pop, making them about equal per-capita. And yet Chicago looks like a much smaller migration.
rectangletangle 12y ago
This surprised me too. Anyone from New York care to comment?
- Mz 12y ago
  I am not from New York. But I immediately thought of this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904567
- Tiksi 12y ago
  I feel like this could be due to how they define 'New York Metro'. I see a lot of people (myself included) moving out of New York City proper and moving to much much cheaper areas like New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County, etc. This is especially true for recent college grads who simply cannot afford to live comfortably in the city while working at an "entry level" job. I feel like many of us in the tech sector forget this since we,overall, have a decent starting salary in our field, and the "First job out of college" is frequently not the first job in the industry. In other industries the your first job will pay not too much over minimum wage, especially if the field isn't competitive. So while the data may show people leaving New York, it may not tell the whole picture. My own experience shows otherwise, though I am aware that anecdotes are not data. People may be moving out of New York City, but they aren't leaving New York City.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago

Hmm. Separating Los Angeles and Riverside seemed pretty strange to me. I mean, yes, they're 60 miles apart, but in the LA basin, people commute that far all the time.

rudimental 12y ago
If Cupertino and Marin are considered the same, and Tracy and San Francisco, I would agree. But they are very different places to be in, LA and Riverside.
jmccree 12y ago
They are probably using MSA instead of PSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_areas_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_are... .

imaginenore 12y ago

What a horrible chart http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migrat... Three shades of blue, thick white borders around bars, I can barely see the colors.

Strilanc 12y ago

The interactive visualization is focused on net migration, but the article is focused on differences in migration based on education. Is there a place I can get the raw data?

danielsju6 12y ago

This seems horribly flawed, it's counting students moving out; all of the large "university cities" are negative.

WildUtah 12y ago

This map is useless. It shows net domestic migration, but has no information on international arrivals. New York is growing even as the map says it's shrinking because it's the number one destination of foreign immigrants. We'd need to know a lot about foreign migration levels and education to make the kind of conclusions people are proposing from this map.

Thriptic 12y ago

I really question their methods. The Boston area for example has exploded with biotech and finance companies over the last 10-15 years, and high tech and big pharma have moved in as well more recently. People are also constantly complaining about lack of affordable housing, which would lead me to believe that lesser educated people are being priced out of the market and are likely leaving, not coming in droves. Their findings also very conveniently align with the overall views of the Atlantic.