Photo Credit: Kristen Morales
Children play outside the Nellie B public housing complex.
Athens is one of the worst places for a child to grow up in a low-income family if that child hopes to escape poverty.
The New York Times published an interactive feature today based on research into income mobility by two Harvard economists, Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren. They used data on segregation by race and income, schools, violent crime and two-parent households to determine how where children are raised affects their future income. They tracked 5 million people who moved during childhood to measure how moving affected their earnings.
In terms of helping poor children climb the income ladder, Clarke County ranks 26th out of 2,478 counties—worse than all but 1 percent.
While kids in all income groups in Clarke County earn less than their peers nationwide at age 26, poor kids fare the worst, earning $4,240 (or 16 percent) less than the national average.
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