The geography of educational attainment

[Docere]

Seems like the closer to the city center, higher educational attainment, particularly when controlling for income and race.

There's a lot more six-figure HHs without degrees, say, in the further-flung suburbs. As they're less likely to have employment in the city center where educated professionals are disproportionately drawn. More tradespeople, nurses, small business owners, middle managers and people in sales etc.

Suburban counties in the NYC area:

College degree

Somerset 58.2%
Morris 57%
Westchester 54.4%
Hunterdon 54.3%
Bergen 53%
Fairfield 50.5%
Monmouth 50.2%
Nassau 49.7%
Putnam 47.4%
Middlesex 45.1%
Rockland 42.3%
Dutchess 42.1%
Suffolk 40.6%
Ocean 32.4%

College degree (White, Not Hispanic or Latino)

Westchester 65.7%
Fairfield 61.5%
Somerset 60.7%
Morris 58.8%
Bergen 56.1%
Hunterdon 55.7%
Nassau 55.5%
Monmouth 53.5%
Putnam 47.5%
Suffolk 45.3%
Rockland 44.3%
Dutchess 44.1%
Middlesex 42.3%
Ocean 33.1%

For the most part, seems true in NYC area - particularly when controlling for race/ethnicity. Fairfield sticks out as a further flung county - due to the corporate and financial presence in Stamford/Greenwich.

[Crawford]

Fairfield is really an inner suburb. Yes, it's geographically more distant, but was settled earlier than the other outer suburbs, and has the fastest and most frequent train service. The coast was pretty fully developed by WW2.

As in most metros, the spatial expansion patterns weren't even, and this is especially true in older areas like the Northeast, with established pre-metropolitan towns and networks. Sprawl filled the existing gaps, moreso than pushing out from a central core. Greenwich, Stamford and other towns through New Haven are older than Philly, and were significant cities long before there was a Northeast Corridor.

[SFBruin]

Woah, I had never thought of that.

[iheartthed]

Fairfield County is also only about 10 miles from the Bronx border. It's closer to the Bronx than Newark Airport is to Midtown Manhattan.

[Docere]

What would you say the inner counties are?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

What would you say the inner counties are?

In New York, Westchester, Nassau, and the western third of Suffolk would probably fit in that bucket. In Connecticut, I'd say roughly the southwestern third of Fairfield County. In New Jersey, probably Bergen, eastern Passaic, Essex, Union, Hudson, and northern Middlesex.