County Impact on childrens future earnings

Children who grow up in rural areas have a better chance of earning more money later in life. A Penn State study confirms that report and tracks the impact of other factors affecting both urban and rural children.The farther away from a city a person is raised, the more likely they are to climb the economic ladder, according to economists, who also found that community characteristics associated with upward mobility have different effects in rural and urban locations.The researchers looked at intergenerational economic mobility in low-income children at the U.S. county level, which also allowed them to examine the effects of distance from metropolitan counties — those having populations of 50,000 or more. They found that being far removed from an urban area is beneficial to low-income children’s upward mobility, all other things being equal.“That’s a significant finding, because it suggests that policy aimed at improving mobility shouldn’t simply consider rural and urban effects but should account for how far a county is from an urban area,” said Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural and regional economics, Penn State, and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. The researchers also looked at five factors strongly associated with upward mobility. Three of these factors have a strong negative correlation: a greater share of single-mother households, a higher high-school dropout rate, and greater income inequality are linked to lower rates of economic mobility.The other two factors have a strong positive correlation: a greater share of jobs with commute times of 15 minutes or less, and a greater amount of social capital, are associated with enhanced economic mobility in a community.