WHY MILLENNIALS SHOULD ALL MOVE TO NORTH DAKOTA
January 5, 2018
In the United States, your chances of achieving the so-called American Dream can depend on a lot of things, including your race, gender, family background and educational attainment. It can also largely depend — as a growing volume of research suggests — on exactly where in the U.S. you live.
In fact, these studies show that there is one somewhat surprising region of the nation where your chance of getting ahead may be best: the seven Great Plains states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and North and South Dakota. That’s right, upstart Millennials — let your peers pack their bags for the costly shores of New York or California; you should pack yours for the friendly plains of Minnesota or North Dakota and go north, young (wo)man!
IF YOU WANT UPWARD MOBILITY, THEN YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT MOVING UPWARD.
The latest data point for this trend is the recently released 2017 Opportunity Index, a joint creation by Opportunity Nation and Child Trends that has, since 2011, taken a composite measure of opportunity in the U.S. that covers four key dimensions: economy, education, health and community. As you might expect, a number of New England states performed well on the index, with Vermont securing the top spot. But five Great Plains states — Minnesota (2), Iowa (3), North Dakota (5), Nebraska (6) and Wisconsin (10) — round off the Top 10, with Kansas (14) and South Dakota (17) appearing in the top 20 and easily outperforming the national average.
