Week 7: Asking Questions

Welcome back everyone!

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any responses from some of the people I have been trying to contact, so I am trying to find new people to contact.

In earlier blogs, I talked about how I am using data from Harvard economist Raj Chetty to create models regarding social mobility. I went back to read some more of his research paper (which is over 100 pages smh) and started to think about one main “problem”. Since we need to establish “borderlines” when regarding income distributions, I thought about the success rates of colleges in terms of starting salary. I referenced the data from this website: https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/colleges-with-the-highest-earning-graduates/. I was a bit surprised to see schools like Colgate and Santa Clara University above UPenn and Yale. Many people try to go to the “elite” universities in a pursuit for a high salary, but perhaps that’s not the case all the time.

This was interesting to me because of how it fits in the context of mobility, as the goal for people in these situations is to end up with a high salary upon graduation. We define upward mobility by saying “moved up _ income quintiles”, but what if some people prefer a certain lifestyle a job presents them over the potential salary. Then which schools would provide that best? Not all people value money over quality of life, and while the two often go hand in hand, they don’t always.

Hopefully I get some responses so I can write about them next week. See y’all later!