5 things to look for when choosing where to raise your kids

Being a childfree woman who reads more social science than is normal or probably healthy, I’m an obvious source for parenting advice. Yesterday, I took some time to generously share some of my wisdom with you, my sweet babies.

Really, the whole thing is an excuse to summarize Raj Chetty et al.’s 2014 absolute banger Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States.

At the end of the day, if you or your child’s mother has a college degree and your household income is above your area median income, it doesn’t really matter where you raise your kids, statistically speaking. (But don’t live in San Francisco, where negative mobility for rich people is relatively high.)

But for middle- and low-income parents, place matters very much. And a good labor market is not enough. In fact, labor conditions didn’t really correlate to a place’s mobility. For example, children who grow up in low-income families in Atlanta and Raleigh tended to stay poor, a fact that “is especially noteworthy because these are generally considered to be booming cities in the South with relatively high rates of job growth.”

So, what do the areas where a lower-half kid can find their way into an upper-half adulthood have in common? Read on to learn which five factors are different in the areas where the American Dream isn’t dead.