The research that I did for my paper looked at the link between poverty and population size in urban settings. My hypothesis was that as cities grow, so too do their poverty rates. I collected data from 17 different cities over a 30 year period. Other factors that I thought would effect poverty rates outside of population were level of education by citizens of those populations and median family income. My two measures of education were the number of people that completed high school and the number of people that completed college or more. I also included the years to see if there was a relationship over time between population and poverty.
The results that I got were somewhat what I had expected. I did find a very statistically significant relationship between poverty rates and population though there was not a very large coefficient on the variable population, the t-stat was highly significant. I was also pleased to find that my measure of education, specifically the college or more variable, effected poverty rates in a negative way. There was a negative correlation between whether a person gets a college degree and poverty rates, which was nice to see because that's what I expected to happen. The same was true for median family income. The coefficient was negative, meaning it decreased poverty rates as it increased and it was very statistically significant. However, the opposite was true for those people who received less than a high school education. As the number of people with this level of education increases, so too did poverty rates. Though it was not statistically significant at a high level, it did suggest an upward trend between the two variables.
Overall, the findings were interesting to see and I was pleased because it was what I was expecting to happen. After writing a rough draft, I think there are still some things I can change around a little and look at more closely to try to get a better model.
No comments:
Post a Comment