A new Census Bureau and Harvard University study have found that two-thirds of young adults in the United States live close to the homes they grew up in. Of these groups, Latinos, African Americans, and those from low-income families only move a short distance away. Latino and Black young adults have more economic opportunities closer to home.
Ben Sprung-Keyser, a Harvard doctoral student, said in an interview with NBC News that these findings prove that if someone provides lots of job opportunities in a given city, most of the people who benefit are people who grew up there. “For many individuals, particularly non-white individuals and those from low-income families, the ‘radius of economic opportunity’ appears to be quite narrow. Locally targeted policies can have locally-targeted effects, and that should impact how we think about making local investments,” he said. The research “tells us something about the effectiveness of local investment policy,” Sprung-Keyser also mentioned.
According to the study, Latinos are more likely to move a shorter distance away from their homes than Whites, with the average distance of Latinos being 144 miles compared to the average distance of Whites being 190 miles. Black young adults had the shortest distance moved from their hometown at 130 miles.
The study includes statistics of individuals born between 1984 and 1992, recording data on where they grew up, where they went once they got older, the average distances they moved away from home, and if people moved in response to the availability of economic opportunities. According to Sprung-Keyser, these components comprise the “radius of economic opportunity.”
Another contributing factor to the distance moved is parental income. Those from a higher-income family are more likely to travel a greater distance than those from a lower-income family. A migrant pattern found in young Black adults, The “New Great Migration,” indicates that young black adults from high-income families were likely to move to Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Washington D.C. The top cities they moved to were Los Angeles, New York, San Antonio, and Phoenix for Latinos.
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