Urban Economics Paper

College Grads Percentage correlation with Median Household Income

Education is one of the key factor for people to move from one area to another. Since, it is the tool for improving one’s standards of living with higher education resulted in high-paying jobs. Furthermore, the Greater Boston area is the leading metropolitan area in the nation for the greatest numbers of college degree with 38% of the population and the rate of people without high-school diploma dropped to an estimated 12%. As well as the higher education rate, Massachusetts also has notably higher median household income at $77,835 which is higher than US median household income at $60,336. In contrast, in the Detroit Metro area only 11% of the population have bachelor’s degree and median household income rate at $26,249 which is much lower even by the nation’s standard. It shows that there is correlation between the rate of the median household income with the numbers of people graduating from university or the other way around as well.

Thereby, the downward spiral of lower median household income associated with lower education level shows the flaws in the system. Also, it will prevent people to get college degree due to their lack of income which will provide them with skills for high-paying jobs. It hypothesizes that metropolitan areas with lower percentage of college degree holders resulted in lower median household income due to the fact that their subjected to minimum wages and labor work which will diminished the chance for the metro area to develop, innovate, and compete with other metro area.