Rasmussen College Map the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility Questions

I need 3 pages for this assignment

This week’s exercise is designed to let you get the feel of working with real census and administrative data and to answer, in a very preliminary way, a research question. It will also give you practice in creating tables.

You will be using The Opportunity Atlas, a data set that lets you see how differences in place of origin matter for a variety of adult outcomes. It matches census data with a host of other data, such as incarceration rates and tax data, and has been used for many path-breaking papers.

The key question you should think about is how the concepts of place, face, and space relate to outcomes in the neighborhood where you grew up. NOTE: If you did not grow up in the United States, you may use a different neighborhood, such as the one in which George Floyd grew up (see your discussion reading (Links to an external site.)). The address for Cuney Homes, where Floyd grew up, is 3260 Truxillo Street, Houston, TX 77004. If you like, you may also use the address where you live now, if you reside off-campus. Do not use an address on the UCI campus.

The outcome we will look at is the individual income of children who grew up in your neighborhood and who are now in their mid-30s. While income is not the only measure of mobility, it is easy to understand. Note that you are measuring the income of people who grew up in a given neighborhood, not the income of the people who now live in the neighborhood now. The latter data you will collect, however.

Since measuring an actual neighborhood is difficult (who gets to determine the boundaries?), the Census Bureau has developed a substitute, known as a census tract. Census tracts are designed with local areas in mind and with boundaries like rivers or arterial roads. They tend to average 4,000 people. When demographers talk about census tracts, they are using them to mean neighborhoods, even though the measurement is imperfect.

Ready to start? Follow the three steps in the directions provided when you first go to website of The Opportunity Atlas. First, in upper left corner, put in the address where you grew up. It should take you to the census tract where you grew up. Second, below the space for the address, go to the outcomes on the left-hand side and choose individual income. Third, go to the upper right-hand side of the screen and specify the three parental income levels (high, middle, low). Do not specify a race or gender. Write down the income of children for each level of parental income. Scroll down under the outcomes in the left-hand side and, under the heading of Neighborhood Characteristics, write down the median household income for the tract for both 2012-16 and for 1990, the poverty rate, the percentage non-white, the foreign-born share, and the fraction of single parents. Now repeat this exercise for two other nearby tracts with which you are familiar. It would be better if the three tracts are notably different in some way. You should now enough data to fill a table that looks like the one below:

Annual individual income of adults by parental income in three neighborhoods

Source: The Opportunity Atlas

Now it’s time to write up your findings. First, in one paragraph, discuss how the incomes of adults in their 30s generally differ according to the relative level of their parents’ income.

Next, draw on the demographic and economic data above to compare the three neighborhoods and show the trajectory of each of them in terms of household income among residents of the tract. Are these neighborhoods gentrifying, declining, or holding steady in terms of household income? Consider the children who grew up in these tracts. How do their individual incomes vary across these three neighborhoods?

Based on your own knowledge, briefly explain how these three tracts demonstrate face, space, and place. For example, do they show social efficacy through a Neighborhood Watch or some other neighborhood organizations? Are there safe parks? Are the neighborhoods clean and well-kept, or do you see trash and weeds? In short, how do these neighborhoods signal what kind of environment they are for raising children? How would you compare these neighborhoods to the one described in the Washington Post article (see above)?

Last, tie together the income data to the ideas of face, space, and place. Does the context of the neighborhood seem to matter to children’s eventual incomes above and beyond the level of their own parents’ income? Explain.

Your write-up will need to cover at least four paragraphs. In addition, you should turn in a table that is neat, easy to read and well-labeled. If you like, you may also upload photos of your neighborhood as part of your discussion. (Google Maps can help.)