BYTHENUMBERs

The High Mobilities

If the American Dream were a landscape, the Great Plains would be a range of towering, snowcapped peaks

Here is a website that every Prairie Business reader should visit: OpportunityAtlas.org.

That’s because the website puts to rest the notion of the Midwest as “flyover country” once and for all.

Far from being a region that can be safely ignored, the Midwest — in particular, the upper Great Plains — is the national model when it comes to upward mobility, the website shows.

In other words, the Great Plains do the American Dream right. And the upper Great Plains of North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota do it best of all.

The ab ove map, a screenshot from the atlas, “shows household income in 2014-2015 for people born between 1978 and 1983 to low-income parents,” as npr.org describes.

“In areas that are more red, people who grew up in low-income households tended to stay low-income. In areas that are more blue, people who grew up in low-income households tended to make more money.”

The map to the right is a cut-out of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota from the map above.

The maps at OpportunityAtlas.org are interactive and can be examined down to the level of a city block. They’re well worth a look.

But for Prairie Business readers, a core and exceptionally meaningful finding is the one that was highlighted in a Star Tribune story on this topic in 2017, after the research first appeared:

“Of the best 100 counties in the United States in which to grow up poor, 77 are in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota,” the study shows. For more on the findings, see the Editor’s Note on Page 10 of this issue of Prairie Business.