Study: Children Raised in Chester County Likely to Earn More As Adults

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If you want to give your child a head start in life, move to Chester County as soon as you can. Compared to the average place in America, simply growing up in Chester County adds more than $2,000 to the household income of a young adult, according to a new study highlighted by the New York Times.020615Hulafrog

Chester County holds an edge over most of its neighbors, and a childhood here is worth closer to $3,000 more than growing up in Philadelphia, $4,500 more than living just across the state line in New Castle County, Del., and a whopping $6,500 more than an Atlantic County, N.J., childhood.

Renowned Harvard income mobility economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren “are no longer confined to talking about which counties merely correlate well with income mobility; new data suggests some places actually cause it,” the article stated.

That means growing up in Chester County directly contributes to better earning power and upward mobility because of five key factors:Chesco children are more likely to rub shoulders with others who come from different household incomes and racial backgrounds, more likely to experience income equality, more likely to go to college, less likely to experience violent crime and less likely to become a single parent.

How a Chilhood in Chester County effects future income. Source--NYT
How a childhood in Chester County positively affects future income. Source–NYT

“The broader lesson of our analysis,” the researchers wrote in the article, “is that social mobility should be tackled at a local level.”

In Greater Philly, only Bucks County adds more overall earning potential for poor children — $3,470 by the age of 26 — but Chester County outranks every other place in the 12-county region for half of the study’s eight subcategories: average boys, average girls, rich boys and the richest boys. Chesco ranked second for poor boys and rich girls, third for poor girls, and fourth for the richest girls.

Montgomery County boosts the earning power of poor children nearly as much as Chesco, by $2,050; while Lancaster County adds $1,690; Berks County adds $1,230; Cecil County, Md., adds $560; Delaware County adds $550; and Philadelphia subtracts $760 compared to the average American location.

Read more about the new study and check out much more data about upward mobility across the region and throughout the country in The New York Times here.

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