🗺️How Your Zip Code Impacts Your Money🗺️
A study connects your zip code to your your lifetime earnings
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Mapping the Correlation Between Wealth and Zip Code
Growing up on “the wrong side of the tracks” meant you weren’t born into a fortunate family and is often used to describe people with less opportunity than others in the United States.
When I was a kid, my family would use this phrase to describe individuals who weren’t fortunate enough for economic or social mobility within their class due to whatever circumstances faced them.
Two new recent pieces of data caught my attention this week:
The Opportunity Atlas seeks to write down individuals’ income levels across their zip codes
More rich friends in childhood can increase your lifetime earnings
Let’s dive into the two.
The Opportunity Atlas
The Opportunity Atlas is a survey of people’s income levels within a certain zip code across the United States. The goal of the project is to “trace the roots of today’s affluence and poverty back to the neighborhoods where people grew up.” The data combines census info, federal income tax returns over several years, and community surveys to form a cohesive map of economic status.
The interactive map can have you investigate your childhood zip code and help draw conclusions on where you ended up to date. One experiment is comparing the zip code of another person (friend, coworker, significant other) and investigating whether or not the data rings true.
The atlas contains several case studies located in Los Angeles, Seattle, Eastern Oklahoma, Chicago, Miami, and New York, where you will be guided through the economic strengths or hardships in the area.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check the info out and see if the data holds true to your individual case!
It Pays to Have Childhood Friends
Another study that caught my interest this week was a finding of how having rich friends in childhood can impact your lifetime earnings.
As reported by CBS and NPR, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his team, found social relationships in childhood impact lifetime earnings from data of over 70 million Facebook users.
When thinking back to my own childhood, my elementary school did an amazing job at integrating children with a variety of household incomes. Ultimately, Chetty and his team found that having wealthier friends in childhood could help with economic mobility later in life.
One observation that stood out to me is that we tend to make friends within our own economic income range as people develop into adulthood.
Lastly, while this is only data, this isn’t a definitive way to look about your own story. Be sure to focus on yourself and what you can bring to the table.
Here’s another favorite quote I’ll leave you with:
Rich people tend to spend time with other rich people, and the same goes for poor people”
Have a great week,
Jordan