Scene 18 of 19, Mobility beyond what census measures predict clusters by region. Step 1 of 2, Predicted and observed.
Census tracts, then counties; modeled estimates
Mobility beyond what census measures predict clusters by region Five census measures account for 44.0% of the variation in tract upward mobility, and the population-weighted standard deviation of the gap between actual and predicted rank is 5.0 percentile points
Step 1 of 2 · Predicted and observed
Each point is a tract, placed by the adult income rank that five census measures predict for children from low-income families and by the rank they reached. A residual is the observed rank minus the predicted one.
Notes, source and chapter
Scenes
Mobility beyond what census measures predict clusters by region Scene 18 of 19, step 1 of 2: Predicted and observed. Census tracts, then counties; modeled estimates.
What to say A positive residual says the model leaves something out. It does not identify a policy that works or a place that causes mobility. The children were born decades before the census measures describe their tracts.
About the chart Five census measures account for 44.0% of the variation in tract upward mobility, and the population-weighted standard deviation of the gap between actual and predicted rank is 5.0 percentile points
Dots spread on both sides of the diagonal, which marks a perfect prediction, and the markers for tenths of tracts ranked by prediction sit close to it. Dots are a random sample of 4,000 of the 82,791 tracts in the model, and 132 tracts fall outside the plotted range; markers are population-weighted mean actual ranks in tenths of all tracts, with 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties. The vertical distance from the diagonal is the residual.
The dots are a random sample of the tracts inside the plotted range, drawn with a fixed seed (stated in the methods note); the R-squared, the residuals and the markers use every tract in the model. Predictors are the poverty rate, the share of adults with a bachelor's degree or more, the single-parent household share, the natural log of median household income and the Black share of residents (Black alone, of any ethnicity), all from the ACS for 2019 to 2023. Tracts with 200 residents or fewer are left out, and each tract is weighted by its ACS population. The outcome describes children raised in the 1980s and 1990s and the predictors describe 2019 to 2023, so the residual includes whatever changed in between. Ranks are percentiles of the national distribution of household income for children born in 1978 to 1983, measured in 2014 to 2015. The Opportunity Atlas adds noise to its estimates to protect privacy and the staged values are never clipped. The file on 2020 tracts is interpolated from 2010 tracts by land area. Source Opportunity Atlas tract outcomes, 1978-1983 birth cohorts (2020 tracts), and ACS 2019-2023 predictors; population-weighted (ACS tract population), modeled estimates
Keys Right, Space, Page Down Next step, then the next scene Left, Page Up Previous step, then the previous scene Home First scene O Overview of the scenes Click or tap Next step; on the left fifth of the screen, the previous one N Notes: what to say, the chart’s caption and source, and the chapter F Fullscreen Escape Close a panel