On returning from a Thanksgiving holiday in New York City, gubernatorial policy analyst Kennedy Noem mused vaguely on “family, delicious food, new opportunities, and (now especially) South Dakota’s wide open spaces and low population.”
New research from Brandeis University finds that the New York City metropolitan area ranks middlingly in providing children good food, healthy family life, and other indicators of opportunity. On a scale of 1 to 100, New York City scores a 51 on Brandeis’s Child Opportunity Score. The national COS is 55.
New York City is a bit of an outlier among northern cities. Scores in the lower half of the COS range tend to be found in the lower half of the United States map:
Three of the five best metros for children are Madison, Wisconsin; Des Moines, Iowa; and Minneapolis, Minnesota, each of which beat the pants off the Big Apple by scoring in the 80s:
The Brandeis researchers derive these scores from a formulization of this concept of a good place to grow up:
Picture a neighborhood where children have access to a high-quality preschool center. When they get older, they can attend their neighborhood schools where student achievement in reading and math is high and where good high school and graduation and college enrollment rates signal to youth that education is valued and attainable. This neighborhood has parks and green spaces, access to healthy food, and low environmental pollution. Finally, the neighborhood has high employment, a low poverty rate, and short commute times for parents. These conditions mean that more economic resources and more time are available to families to raise children [Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Clemens Noelke, and Nancy McArdle, “The Geography of Child Opportunity: Why Neighborhoods Matter for Equity,” Brandeis University: Diversity Data Kids.org, January 2020].
New York City ends up with a 51 not because the whole city is just so-so for providing kids with opportunities but because of wide disparities in opportunity from neighborhood to neighborhood. In NYC, 25% of children live in “very low” opportunity neighborhoods while 26% live in “very high” opportunity neighborhoods. In Minneapolis, only 6% of children live in “very low” opportunity neighborhoods while 49% live in “very high” opportunity neighborhoods.
Brandeis’s cool maps and lists focus on the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, meaning we don’t get any up-front comparisons of Child Opportunity Scores here on the Buffalo Commons with the big cities. But Brandeis has data for every neighborhood in the country, including South Dakota. South Dakota’s 222 neighborhoods, home to just about 211,000 children in 2015, had an average Child Opportunity Score of 59, closer to New York City than to Minneapolis.
South Dakota’s twelve largest metro areas—Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Aberdeen, Brookings, Huron, Mitchell, Pierre, Spearfish, Vermillion, Watertown, Yankton, and that portion of Sioux City, Iowa, that tumesces across the Big Sioux—house 73% of South Dakota’s kids. Neighborhoods in those big towns average a Child Opportunity Score of 64. The 27% of kids living in the more rural rest of the state average a Child Opportunity Score of 50.
| Education | Health+ Environment |
Social+ Economic |
Total Child Opportunity Score | |
| Brookings | 79 | 80 | 77 | 79 |
| Sioux City | 63 | 76 | 80 | 76 |
| Mitchell | 67 | 76 | 73 | 73 |
| Aberdeen | 60 | 74 | 74 | 71 |
| Watertown | 56 | 88 | 70 | 70 |
| Pierre | 38 | 60 | 78 | 68 |
| Sioux Falls | 52 | 71 | 70 | 67 |
| Spearfish | 56 | 73 | 65 | 65 |
| Vermillion | 65 | 61 | 59 | 61 |
| Yankton | 56 | 72 | 52 | 55 |
| Huron | 9 | 74 | 64 | 52 |
| Rapid City | 38 | 68 | 55 | 52 |
| rural remainder | 35 | 44 | 57 | 50 |
South Dakota’s urban/rural gap on Child Opportunity Scores is lowest on the Social and Economic Domain scores (67 urban, 57 rural), larger on the education domain (50 urban, 35 rural), and largest on the health and environment domain (71 urban, 44 rural).
Both New York City and South Dakota see wide disparities from neighborhood to neighborhood in opportunities for children. On average, many South Dakota neighborhoods offer healthier opportunities for children than New York City… but on balance, we only find those better averages in South Dakota’s bigger towns, not in the most rural areas. Kennedy Noem will want to analyze that data when she’s formulating policy for economic development, education, and child welfare.
Ain’t buying it. I live in Madison, WI. We’ve got big problems here regarding child opportunity, achievement gaps, etc. The city and schools do a lot to address the problem, including school boundary changes and lots of community programming to surge resources where they are needed.
In general these sorts of studies lump in a lot of data into one score. It’s kind of like standardized testing. You have to disaggregate the data to understand anything of value from the effort.
Donald, I believe that Cory pointed out a disaggregation to the neighborhood level (looks like maybe elementary school district-level based on SD having 222 of them). Just sayin’. Dig deeper.
Cory, send analyst K. Noem (jr.?) the link to the study. Ask her to get back to you with her understanding. Report back.
I skimmed the study. It’s interesting, and it does comport to what I found in Rapid City. The data are more a description of the unevenness of opportunity, not of the adequacy of education. At any rate, I’ll be studying this research.
-On the Colorado map … The liberal Denver Metro is 71. The Republican Colorado Springs is 55. Remember that, young SD’ers, when you choose where to live, when you relocate.
-On the South Dakota chart … Brookings always scores as a great place to live. Get Republican Realtor Pat Powers out of there and it might improve even more. Or, find a liberal to sell you a home.