How Likely Low-Income Mooresville Kids Will Escape Poverty

MOORESVILLE, NC — A new online tool developed by university researchers and the U.S. Census Bureau shows where in Mooresville children are most — and least — likely to escape poverty or be incarcerated. The federal government, along with scientists from Harvard and Brown universities, unveiled the Opportunity Atlas mapping tool Monday. The researchers found that kids who move early in life to better neighborhoods can see their future paychecks increase by several thousand dollars a year.

In Mooresville, the tool shows that people who grow up in east of Lake Norman between River Highway and Clontz Hill Road near Bells Crossroads as well as southeast Mooresville along the Coddle Creek Highway corridor — regardless of race and parent income — go on to earn the lowest average incomes at $24,000 a year. Meanwhile, people who grew up in near Brawley School Road and in neighborhoods near Trump National Golf Club Charlotte earn the highest incomes at $34,000 a year and $38,000 a year.

Nationwide, there are often dramatic differences between neighborhoods within the same community. This contrast is particularly evident in the Bronx, New York, where some neighborhoods appear blood-red when it comes to future household income while others — just a couple miles away — are a deep navy blue.

In the Bronx, there’s a particularly stark difference in outcomes. Black men who grew up in low-income families in the Bedford Park neighborhood went on to earn on average $33,000 a year. But black men who grew up in similar circumstances in nearby Charlotte Gardens — just a 17-minute bicycle ride away — earned on average $16,000 less a year. The two neighborhoods are roughly equal in affordability, to boot.

“This example illustrates how kids’ outcomes can differ sharply even between similar neighborhoods,” the developers wrote.

The tool also allows us to see who is most likely to be incarcerated. In Mooresville, individuals who grew up in southeast Mooresville saw the highest incarceration rates at 3.5 percent. That number includes all races, incomes and genders. The Interstate 95 corridor and Williamson Road area, by contrast, saw the lowest at incarceration rate at less than 1 percent.

Among the most eye-popping examples in America is in Watts, a neighborhood in central Los Angeles where roughly 44 percent of black men who grew up there were incarcerated on April 1, 2010. By comparison, 6.2 percent of black men who grew up in families with similar incomes in central Compton — just two miles away — were incarcerated that same day.

Kids who move at birth from a below-average to an above-average social mobility neighborhood within the same county would see their lifetime earnings go up by roughly $200,000, the authors wrote. Those children would also be less likely to find themselves behind bars or become a teen parent.

But the authors noted they aren’t implying everyone in these neighborhoods should pack up and head for greener pastures. Stakeholders should use the data to find “opportunity bargains” — affordable places that also lead to good outcomes for kids — and replicate those successes in other communities.

“The lesson to be drawn from these findings is not necessarily that moving is the best solution for increasing upward mobility, but rather that the low rates of upward mobility in some areas can be changed,” the authors wrote.

The Opportunity Atlas was built using anonymous data on 20 million Americans who are currently in their mid-thirties. Ron Jarmin of the Census Bureau said the agency was excited to unveil the social mobility tool because it provides insights at such a local level.

“The Atlas has great social significance because no one has ever had access to social mobility estimates at such a granular level,” Jarmin said in an accompanying case study.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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Photo credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images