PLACE MATTERS: The Opportunity Atlas
Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty? The Opportunity Atlas, available in an online format, charts the places of relative opportunity. Using anonymous data from 20 million Americans from childhood to their mid-30s, the interactive atlas allows us to trace the roots of affluence and poverty back to neighborhoods where people grew up.
The Opportunity Atlas reflects data on 20 million Americans who are in their mid-thirties today. It maps individuals back to the Census tract (geographic units consisting of about 4,200 people) in which they grew up. Then, for each of the 70,000 tracts in America, the atlas indicates children’s average adult earnings, incarceration rates, and other outcomes by their parental income level, race, and gender.
The maps above show the individual incomes of adults (excluding spouses) whose families were low income, for both men and women, and all races. To provide a range of large and small cities, I included maps (variable scales) of the following places:
Manhattan and the Bronx, NY
Brooklyn, NY
San Francisco, CA
Poughkeepsie, NY
Whittier, CA
The data suggest that children from low-income homes have much better achievement as adults if they grew up in relatively affluent neighborhoods, where presumably education, services, opportunities, and role models were more nurturing. So where one grows up makes an big difference for adults.
