CityLab Daily: Some Rural Areas Are Better for Economic Mobility

What We’re Following

Flyover data: In yesterday’s newsletter, we talked about economic mobility in urban areas, based on the new Opportunity Atlas released by Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights. Today we’re looking at one of the less appreciated parts of that story: how they compare to rural areas. Despite the narrative of cities and suburbs as opportunity-rich places, kids who grow up in low-income families in rural areas actually have a better shot at moving up the ladder than their urban counterparts.

In fact, two recent studies of Chetty’s earlier data found that upward mobility declines with proximity to a major urban center: The further someone grows up from a metropolitan area, the more likely it is that their economic standing will improve later in life. That pattern doesn’t graft perfectly on every city or neighborhood, especially in the South. But as CityLab’s Richard Florida writes, it offers a chance for each type of place to learn something from the other—and defies what we think of as the urban-rural divide.

—Andrew Small

More on CityLab

What We’re Reading

The radical plan to spread Mexico City’s agencies into smaller cities (The Guardian)

What makes rent “affordable?” (Slate)

A bus driver is found guilty in last year’s Citi Bike death. (New York Times)

Senator Elizabeth Warren breaks down America’s ugly history of housing discrimination (The Root)

County by county, ICE faces a growing backlash (Washington Post)

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