Findings from a new study by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren has huge consequences on how we think about poverty and mobility in the United States. The pair, economists at Harvard, have long been known for their work on income mobility, but the latest findings go further. Now, the researchers are no longer confined to talking about which counties merely correlate well with income mobility; new data suggests some places actually cause it.
Consider Cuming County, Neb.
It’s among the best counties in the U.S. in helping poor children up the income ladder. It ranks 2,462nd out of 2,478 counties, better than about 99 percent of counties.
Here are the estimates for how much 20 years of childhood in Cuming County adds or takes away from a child’s income (compared with an average county), along with the national percentile ranking for each.
