KOTA TV spotlights some ledger-demain by accountant Richard Barrington, who says North Dakota and South Dakota are the best states in America for young people aged 20 to 24 to get their start. The fact that Barrington thinks North Dakota is better than South Dakota should be enough to laugh this "study" out of the room. But let's be pickier.
First, let's look at a response from a local young businesswoman:
Many local young professionals agree, the Midwest, Rapid [City] in particular, has a lot to offer the young and ambitious.
"It also provides an opportunity for young people to get a start because the competition isn't as fierce as it is in larger cities and metropolitan areas right now," said Karissa Eifert, a young professional with the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce [PJ Randhawa, "South Dakota Voted Best Place to Be Young," KOTA TV, September 6, 2012].
Wait: we're a good place because there's less competition? Hmm... if competition is the driving force of our economy, doesn't Eifert's comment indicate that young people would find the economy working better in the bigger cities where there is more competition?
Now let's look at Barrington's study itself. He lists these ten states as the top places for 20- to 24-year-olds:
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Iowa
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Delaware
- Vermont
- Alaska
- Utah
- New Hampshire
As economic factors attractive to young adults, Barrington looks at employment for young people, auto insurance costs, college tuition, and housing costs. Those are valid economic metrics, and South Dakota does well on those metrics compared to other states. But Barrington fails to put those figures in the context of the wages our apparently plentiful jobs offer to pay for those expenses. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the top five states on Barrington's list all have a median income that is lower than the national median.
Now Barrington may have left out wages because young people get crappy wages everywhere. Overall median income may get spread out by income opportunities that happen later on in workers' lives.
Barrington makes the following surprising claim to justify his list:
Again, it's an unconventional list, but there must be something to it: Eight of the 10 states listed above have a greater portion of 18-24-year-olds than most states, so they are attracting young people. If you are a young adult looking for a more welcoming environment, you might want to join them [Richard Barrington, "Ten States Where Youth Rules," Money-Rates.com, August 27, 2012].
Barrington starts with a reach, then goes for completely non-causal and counterfactual assertions.
First, to say there are more young people in eight of his ten favored states is nominally but barely true. According to Census figures, yes, all but Montana and New Hampshire have a higher percentage of young people than the national average. But look at the group he's talking about in his list, 20- to 24-year-olds:
| State | BarrRank | Percentage of Population age 20-24 |
| North Dakota | 1 | 8.766% |
| South Dakota | 2 | 7.074% |
| Iowa | 3 | 7.003% |
| Montana | 4 | 6.786% |
| Nebraska | 5 | 7.078% |
| Delaware | 6 | 7.001% |
| Vermont | 7 | 7.008% |
| Alaska | 8 | 7.662% |
| Utah | 9 | 8.196% |
| New Hampshire | 10 | 6.422% |
| United States | 6.992% |
Only North Dakota and Utah have a 20-24 percentage that is more than a percentage point than the national percentage. Alaska approaches seven-tenths of a point larger. In South Dakota, in a random crowd of 1000* people, you might spot one more early twenty-something. We're not exactly the mosh pit.
Whatever the magnitude of these differences, we cannot conclude, as Barrington hastily does, that any of these states are attracting early twenty-somethings. Those states may simply have a larger percentage of young people to start with. Granted, looking at Census data, seven of the ten states on Barrington's top ten enjoy less drop-off than the national average in the percentage of 15- to 19-year-olds to the percentage of 20- to 24-year-olds in their populations.
Data on actual migration shows the hastiness of Barrington's conclusion. Looking at migration rates for 22- to 39-year olds with all degree levels, only three of Barrington's top ten youth states made the top half of states for migration rates in 2007. North Dakota, Alaska, and Vermont posted negative migration rates. The factors Barrington says make states great for 20- to 24-year-olds apparently don't do a great job of making those folks stick around to make ongoing contributions to the local economy.
And just to quibble on the lifestyle side, Barrington compares data on number of bars and fitness clubs. By those two metrics, Barrington completely misses the outdoor recreation opportunities that I see avid hikers, bikers, climbers, ATVers, hunters, and fishers sinking their boot and tire treads into here in the Black Hills. Young people aren't all tipping cold ones and then trying to work them off at the gym.
My inner Agent Mulder says, "I want to believe." But my inner Agent Scully demands some better evidence. Barrington's data have some utility, but they fall far short of capturing the full picture of South Dakota's attractiveness to the youngest adults.
Update 21:02 MDT: I originally spoke of a crowd of 100. Mr. Richard Schriever notes in the comment section that I didn't move my decimal point far enough to the right! Thanks, Richard!
Looks like SDSU and Northern State have mortuary science programs but nothing accredited?
When I was a young adult, a place like South Dakota wouldn't have shown up on my radar at all. I couldn't have cared less about wages. I wanted pizazz, the big city, the beach, the intellectual elite, the diversity, the eccentricity!
I took a job at minimum wage in Connecticut (it was the only job I applied for out of college), then went to Miami, Los Angeles, and Hawaii before finally ending up here in Fuddy Duddy Land.
Passions ruled. The nickels and dimes took care of themselves.
But these days, chasing your dreams doesn't matter. Only "economic performance" matters, at least to people who make up these sorts of "studies." Oh by the way, I have some passes to a mountain retreat in Kansas. Bidding starts right now.
For whatever reason, I spend the first 12 years post college in NYC, Boston and L.A. This study doesn't make me think it was a mistake.
There just aren't any jobs here that would pay me six figures right out of school, not that it would have mattered to me.
But I'm glad there is at least one source saying this is the place to go. It is a very important goal for us to keep our best and brightest in SD.
I'm sure Pat Powers would rip on me for that.
His post that Varilek is somehow at fault for studying and working abroad and in NYC was hilarious. Apparently it is preferred to get knocked up and drop out of college like Kristi.
(Easy, tiger—the "knocked up" claim is false and gets us nowhere. According to Wikipedia, Kristi married Bryon when she was 20; she left college when she was 22. And as a good Democrat, I say that when, how, and with whom a woman chooses to procreate is her business.)
My apologies.
I agree with you. Not trying to spread falsehoods. (But I would note that knocked up doesn't necessarily imply illegitimacy.)
Not that I have any problem with children born out of wedlock anyway.
Stan: Kansas? Whose leg are you pulling here?
I am a little puzzled as to why Barrington chooses gyms as the proxy for recreational opportunities. Folks in the 20-24 age range are often going to have access to university athletic facilities. They're also less likely to have disposable income to spend on such memberships. Of course, I've always been an outdoor-exercise guy, so I may be missing the importance of gyms to other folks.
When it's -30 for two months straight Hell looks pretty good.
Doc Newquist just cross-posted on this same topic: go give him some clicks.
Mr. Stan's studies and cave of wonderment look much better than what that hack Mr. Newquist is blabbering about.
Thanks for the kind words, Grudz. But you know, when I was 23 years old and fresh out of college, I was nothing more or less than an arrogant whipper-snapper. I thought that if I threw myself at something, I could have it.
Those were the Carter years, and students were papering their walls with job-application rejection letters.
I learned that they wanted someone to serve as the technician for a ham radio broadcast station (the only one of its kind, at the "Mecca" of ham radio, the American Radio Relay League in Newington, Connecticut) for $7,150 a year. That was in 1977. I thought it was a dream job. It was the only job I applied for, and I got it.
Greater Hartford turned out to be a lot like the Twin Cities (Minnesota), with similar values. But I'd have probably gone to that job even if it had been in the real Mecca, or in Boston, or San Francisco.
Culture, values, taxes, none of that mattered a whit to me.
I took that job because it was what I wanted to do. Period.
I moved to Florida because I got tired of Northern winters. I started writing because my boss in Miami was a self-made man and I wanted to be one too and he said I could and should.
When I went to South Beach Miami, I did it not because of the values they hold there (I'm straight as a Kansas highway, mountains and all), but because I wanted to live in a place with a diverse bunch of cool people.
When I went to Los Angeles, it was because someone told me that on the West Coast, the "barmetric pressure was more constant" and I would perhaps get over the horrible sinus headaches I had developed. (The guy was right. It worked.) But after South Beach, I found L.A. conservative and boring.
So I went back to South Beach, and then decided what the heck, Y2K is a mighty good excuse to try out the Big Island of Hawaii. So I moved to Kona and spent a year and a half there.
Don't want to navel-gaze too much in front of you all, except to say that "economic performance" probably matters a heck of a lot less to young people than those guys in the penguin suits imagine it does.
At the moment I'm struggling with the fantasy of going off-grid to Montana, just trying out that sort of life, seeing where it leads, and of course, writing a book about it. But these old bones don't rattle quite as loud and fast as they used to do.
Funny ... In 2004 I was attracted to South Dakota because of the low cost of living (and taxes are a part of that formula), and the relatively low crime rates. I still think this is a great place. But I have to say, I'm getting that old itch, and I'm not sure that I won't someday shake the old carcass enough to set out on a new venture.
For all you young people out there (if any are reading this blog), I say, "Follow your heart!" The heck with "economic performance." That whole notion is a bunch of hogwash. It doesn't tranfer to real people with real lives at all.
As for the "cave of wonderment," try clicking on my blue byline, above.
Stan, someday someone is going to piece together all of your comments over the past few years here and compose a remarkable biography of a great American wanderer. You defy labels and actuarial prediction.
I especially appreciate your advice that young people follow their heart, not the economy. I can see how deciding one's place and profession with an accountant's checklist could lead to a hollow feeling in one's soul someday.
Actually Cory, there isn't a likelyhood of spotting an "extra" 20 something in a crowd in SD until that crowd reaches 1,000, not 100. That means there are probably around 800 "extra" 20 somethings in SD - Total.
Thank you, Richard! I misread those statistics. The difference is even less than I thought! Here's how the math should work:
—In a crowd of 100 people, whether Americans in general or South Dakotans specifically, you'd see the same number of 20–24-year-olds, seven.
—In a crowd of 100,000 typical Americans, you'd see 6,992 young people aged 20–24.
—In a crowd of 100,000 typical South Dakotans, you'd see 7,074, 82 more than we'd see in the national crowd.
—With a current estimated population of 824,000, we should have about 58,300 young people aged 20–24, just 675 more than if our 20-24 percentage matched the U.S. average. That's a 0.8% difference in our population.
North Dakota leading country in
land rapingjob creation, New Mexico in top ten: AOL.Matt Varilek: thump her.