Max Vierling
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Mindy Adnot
Over the past decade Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have become aware of the surprising lack of economic mobility, despite steady upward growth of general economic trends. This realization mostly in part to the work of Raj Chetty who did a major data analysis study to rank the cities in the United States as highest to lowest in factors like mobility. Charlotte’s response to a rank close to 50 out of 50 major cities was to start and charge the Leading on opportunity task force, a part of this force is a large dataset called the quality of life or qol dataset used in my investigation. Using the qol data I investigated how racial segregation and inequality affect black mobility in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Through my analysis I was able to express the clear inequalities and segregation in Charlotte, as well as linking predominantly black neighborhoods to much lower success in elementary school and lower success in high school. These factors were also both strongly correlated with high household incomes suggesting money is the primary element of success. In the near future I will also be exploring the odd negative trend between access to early child care and elementary school success, as well as continuing to explore better ways to implement subsidized housing in Charlotte.
