Take it with a sack of salt as it comes from NY Times. But still fun to play around with a chart.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... abg=1&_r=0

What a bullshit study!

You can show correlation between just about anything...causation however is a different animal.

Isnt it a bit more plausible that the people in the richer areas might actually have skills in holding and maintaining a supporting job, that they teach to their children?
While poorer counties have poor or no skills in holding or maintaining a supporting job and they intern pass what little they have, or don't, to their children, who continue to apply it to their life.
Those who move out learn new social skills from the people in a more affluent area, get jobs in those areas, and build networks with the business people of that area.

Or the poor communities are being kept down by the richer areas?

So umm yeah. Pretty much that. Which, along with several other factors mentioned in the article, pretty much lead to what they describe.

And then...


They are basically placing blame on the people in the social strata and that by changing that strata , the child does better or worse.
Any sociology 101 student who has taken psych 101 can draw this conclusion.
Problem is its not the people of the strata causing the problem, it the foundational skills of the strata, and those skills, like many strata skills can not effectively be transfered between strata...but they can be shifted to people.

And the foundational skills of the strata are rooted in the people living and working in the strata. Do you want your kid growing up in some uneducated, economically depressed, white trash inbred backwater in Arkansas, or say, in Bellevue? Where are they going to have the best chance at a successful future? I'm pretty sure if you started a family in Bellevue, and then raised them in Hillbilly Hollow a few years later, their life would suck balls compared to if you'd stayed put. I'd say in those cases, it's very much the people of the strata causing the problem/solution. Better quality people make a better quality social strata, make for a better quality of life.