- The proportion of the state population that is 'advantaged', meaning the proportion of the population that the Census Bureau defines as 'Non hispanic white', 'asian' or 'other' versus 'disadvantaged' which includes the categories 'African American', 'Hispanic', 'Native American' and 'Pacific Islander'. Doing it this way results in a slight overlap because technically hispanics can be of any race. However the maximum overlap is 3.6 percent for New Mexico and most states have a much smaller overlap. This data is from the 2010 census. I choose this measure because there is still a strong dividing line in racial/ethnic performance and it's not fair to compare states with very different mixes without making an adjustment. A more sophisticated adjustment would be to run a regression with all of the racial categories but I wanted to keep this simple. Perhaps I'll do that next.
- The cost of living index adjusted per capita median income of each state. Technically there isn't a 'statewide cost of living index', it's only done by metro area but I used an index created by the Missouri Economic Research Information center that weighted cost of living by metro population. I think it's a pretty good proxy. I used 2011 per capita median income from the Census bureau. I used median income rather than mean because I wanted to measure how well each state was doing for its average earner rather than have the results be skewed by the fabulously rich. I know this will probably hurt states like NY and CA a bit but....tough.
One other point: this analysis is before taxes. If you apply Federal, state and local tax burdens, the performance of high nominal income states like MD, VA, CT, MA would be worse because they are paying both higher Federal taxes on the higher nominal income as well as generally higher state taxes. This would tend to make lower tax states like DE and TX look better. And red states look better in general.
I've mapped the two variables against each other. Typically you would expect that states that are very white and/or asian would have high real median incomes and states that had lots of 'disadvantaged' groups would have low incomes. What we find is that there is a relationship but that there are some remarkable outliers - both good and bad.
First the Good: TX, MD, VA, IL, DE, CO and UT all do well relative to their racial mix. In particular, TX, MD and VA rock the racial mix adjusted world. Of course MD and VA are the welfare queens of the Federal Superstate. TX, not so much.
By contrast HI, WV, ME, VT, MT, OR, RI, AR, and NY under perform relative to their racial mix with HI, WV, ME and VT being particular laggards.
Places like DC, NM, MS, and surprisingly CA and FL are where you would expect them to be given their high level of diversity. And my home state of Missouri? Right in the bloody middle like usual. And where are vaunted 'rich' states like MA? CT? WA? and NJ? Well, their super high costs pull down their high incomes by quite a bit.
Is there a partisan lesson here? I intend to do an actual regression and map each state to the regression line. That should give a definitive measure of performance relative to what was expected. However, just looking at it tells me that if you compare 'like' to 'like' that something is going on. First of all I discount the performance of MD and VA, without the Federal Superstate they wouldn't be where they are. If you do that, the two best performing states are among the reddest in the land - TX and UT, the other states in the mix are CO which has scooped up quite a bit of CA's affluence without getting californicated, DE which with it's unique revenue model has successfully turned itself into the Luxembourg of North America and IL, which judging from the news and my St. Louis, MO vantage point is living on past glory.
The poorest states are a combination of crunchy green (ME, VT, OR), oddballs (RI, HI), and red state laggards (AR, WV, MT) and of course, NY. I must point out that AR, WV and MT are the states in their region that historically have been least reliably 'red' and least urban while the other six are among the bluest of the blue. Draw what conclusions you will but WV, VT, HI and ME are really doing poorly relative to their ethnicity, perhaps it is some combination of isolation and politics, also, with the exception of Honolulu, none of these states have decent sized cities. Although other poor states (RI, NY, OR) are very urban.
Another interesting comparison is between the four 'mega' states: CA, TX. FL. and NY. TX has the most disadvantaged demographics but it performs far better than the other three. In fact, NY, with the 'best' demographics of the four is the poorest megastate. Texas and to a lesser extent Utah (because it's wealth probably has a lot to do with Mormonism which can't be replicated, at least by government policy) is the star of the class for giving people that aren't supposed to succeed in 'racist' America a much better standard of living.
Age is another interesting factor: According to the Census Bureau UT and TX are the states with the youngest median age while poverty traps VT, WV, ME and MT are the four oldest states. .
Obviously there are many reasons people live where they do beyond raw standard of living. Oregon's lifestyle is very different from TX but if you assume that all states set out with the objective of raising the living standards of their average citizen, then the states that do the best at this should be recognized. Even if they're not fashionable.
The other thing we know is that tragically, living near the national capital is the fastest way to relative riches. Now there's an income inequality that all of us can agree needs to be rectified.
One final thought: perhaps Texas' notably sanguine attitude towards immigration can be explained by their superior ability to accommodate and flourish with high levels of inflow. Perhaps immigration in the rest of the country wouldn't be so unpopular if those places were run more like Texas. Just a thought.
Is there a partisan lesson here? I intend to do an actual regression and map each state to the regression line. That should give a definitive measure of performance relative to what was expected. However, just looking at it tells me that if you compare 'like' to 'like' that something is going on. First of all I discount the performance of MD and VA, without the Federal Superstate they wouldn't be where they are. If you do that, the two best performing states are among the reddest in the land - TX and UT, the other states in the mix are CO which has scooped up quite a bit of CA's affluence without getting californicated, DE which with it's unique revenue model has successfully turned itself into the Luxembourg of North America and IL, which judging from the news and my St. Louis, MO vantage point is living on past glory.
The poorest states are a combination of crunchy green (ME, VT, OR), oddballs (RI, HI), and red state laggards (AR, WV, MT) and of course, NY. I must point out that AR, WV and MT are the states in their region that historically have been least reliably 'red' and least urban while the other six are among the bluest of the blue. Draw what conclusions you will but WV, VT, HI and ME are really doing poorly relative to their ethnicity, perhaps it is some combination of isolation and politics, also, with the exception of Honolulu, none of these states have decent sized cities. Although other poor states (RI, NY, OR) are very urban.
Another interesting comparison is between the four 'mega' states: CA, TX. FL. and NY. TX has the most disadvantaged demographics but it performs far better than the other three. In fact, NY, with the 'best' demographics of the four is the poorest megastate. Texas and to a lesser extent Utah (because it's wealth probably has a lot to do with Mormonism which can't be replicated, at least by government policy) is the star of the class for giving people that aren't supposed to succeed in 'racist' America a much better standard of living.
Age is another interesting factor: According to the Census Bureau UT and TX are the states with the youngest median age while poverty traps VT, WV, ME and MT are the four oldest states. .
Obviously there are many reasons people live where they do beyond raw standard of living. Oregon's lifestyle is very different from TX but if you assume that all states set out with the objective of raising the living standards of their average citizen, then the states that do the best at this should be recognized. Even if they're not fashionable.
The other thing we know is that tragically, living near the national capital is the fastest way to relative riches. Now there's an income inequality that all of us can agree needs to be rectified.
One final thought: perhaps Texas' notably sanguine attitude towards immigration can be explained by their superior ability to accommodate and flourish with high levels of inflow. Perhaps immigration in the rest of the country wouldn't be so unpopular if those places were run more like Texas. Just a thought.
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