
High-School Dropouts and College Grads Are Moving to Very Different Places - gregrata
http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/06/high-school-dropouts-and-college-grads-are-moving-to-very-different-places/372065/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=facebook
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ars
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
> 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/Migrat...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg)

~~~
ars
> 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.)

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danielsju6
This seems horribly flawed, it's counting students moving out; all of the
large "university cities" are negative.

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Thriptic
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.

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

~~~
ghaff
There are a few things in the chart that just seem... odd. For example, it
says that Boston is losing people (EXCEPT for less than high school graduates)
to almost the same degree as Detroit is. That just doesn't seem right to me
whether it's the Biotech buildings going up all over Cambridge or the real
estate prices which I think I can safely assume are a lot higher than
Detroit's. (Not picking on Detroit but for those who may not be as familiar
with US cities, it's pretty much the poster child for urban decay right now.)

~~~
48snickers
Not helping: I think they've done an exceptionally poor job of clarifying how
they defined the metropolitan areas. For example, the label for the data in
the Boston area (lifted off the map, which was the only place I could find the
slightest mention) is "Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH". Grouping MA and NH?!
Conversely, Riverside and Los Angeles are separated despite covering a similar
geographic range. I'd love to see the geographic regions in this study shown
as polygons on a map, along with some sense of the total population per
region.

~~~
cc439
They did an exceptionally poor job of defining metro areas. Separating
Greenville and Spartanburg SC is dubious on its own but defining "Greenville"
as the unimaginably small city plus the two smallest suburbs is a bit
ludicrous. I know several companies that have individually relocated more
employees to the region than this map credits for the whole metro area.

South Carolina has some weird outliers in terms of city limits and Greenville
is one of them. The city itself is only 26.1 square miles and is mostly
commercially zoned.

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kingnight
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
Cost of living would be my guess.

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WildUtah
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.

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imaginenore
What a horrible chart

[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migrat...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/06/Migration_by_Education_Metro_Chart/c908bc7ed.jpg)

Three shades of blue, thick white borders around bars, I can barely see the
colors.

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AnimalMuppet
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.

~~~
jmccree
They are probably using MSA instead of PSA:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_are...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_areas_of_the_United_States)
.

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Strilanc
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?

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

~~~
brwnll
More accurately: people are fleeing the North East.

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DougWebb
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
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.

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lotharbot
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.

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a8da6b0c91d
The wide open places where there is no major city lack major cities because
they are unsuitable sites. There isn't enough fresh water and/or the energy
demands of logistics are unfeasible. Newsflash: we are not building brand new
urban areas, and we won't be. People will continue to increase congestion and
sprawl at the existing metropolitan areas. The ecology and quality of life
will continue to degrade.

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seanmcdirmid
There is plenty of fresh water and infrastructure in Kansas...it is not
Nevada! We can probably double the number of cities in the USA no problem; we
have the resources, we just lack the people.

The USA is not China, where what you say is actually true (lack of arable
land, resources, overcrowded cities, not much ability to build new cities
because all the good space is already taken).

