USA States Compared to Countries By Education Level

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As regular readers know, one thing that drives me to distraction is the myth of American exceptionalism, a myth most loved by Republican politicians but also foolishly embraced y Democrats as well.  The truth is that America is becoming increasing less than exceptional unless one uses ranks for gun violence and the percentage of the population of an advanced that lacks health care coverage.  Now, America ranks 28th in educational attainment and life expectancy is declining unlike in other advanced nations.   An article looks at how American states were compared to foreign nations based on educational levels.  The map they compiled is above.  Actually, Virginia did fairly well in relative terms, no doubt because of the high education levels in Northern Virginia.  Here are article highlights:

Americans like to think they’re the best when it comes to just about everything, when measured against other nations. While we’re certainly the richest, most freedom loving, and pretty much the bodyguards for the poor and defenseless, we’ve known for years that we’re certainly not the smartest country on earth.

Recently, we ranked 28th when it came to math and science scores, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

We’re really smart, people. Just not the smartest. And we’re working on it.

We thought it would be cool to align each state’s educational attainment to a country of similar intelligence. 

We used the U.S. Census to get the numbers on each state’s high school graduation rate, and then compared those numbers to the education index of each country in the world, provided by the United Nations Development Program

Many things stand out. For instance, most of the northeast – considered the ‘smartest’ region in the United States – is very similar to Europe’s education levels.

Note how the states that are GOP strongholds fared.   It actually strikes me as accurate, especially when one looks at the Deep South.  Embracing ignorance does not make "America great again."

Social Mobility Is Lowest in the South/Bible Belt

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I often mark the argument that backwardness and bigotry are impediments to economic progress.  A new study reported on by the New York Times would seem to corroborate this premise in significant part.  Where is social mobility the lowest?  In the South and Bible Belt, of course.  Where is it higher?  Except for some surprising exceptions in the sparsely settled mid-west, in the Northeast and in the far west.  In short, progressive areas where racism and homophobia are less prevalent provide a better opportunity for those born into the bottom economic classes of society to move up.  In Virginia, the highest social mobility is not surprisingly found in Northern Virginia.  The lowest social mobility is found across Virginia's largely reactionary south side - and area where the "godly Christians" hold sway.  As for Hampton Roads, it does not fare too well either, something that ought to send a warning bell to area leaders.  Here are article highlights:

The study — based on millions of anonymous earnings records and being released this week by a team of top academic economists — is the first with enough data to compare upward mobility across metropolitan areas. These comparisons provide some of the most powerful evidence so far about the factors that seem to drive people’s chances of rising beyond the station of their birth, including education, family structure and the economic layout of metropolitan areas. 

Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast, Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota. 

“Where you grow up matters,” said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the study’s authors. “There is tremendous variation across the U.S. in the extent to which kids can rise out of poverty.” 

That variation does not stem simply from the fact that some areas have higher average incomes: upward mobility rates, Mr. Hendren added, often differ sharply in areas where average income is similar, like Atlanta and Seattle. 

The gaps can be stark. On average, fairly poor children in Seattle — those who grew up in the 25th percentile of the national income distribution — do as well financially when they grow up as middle-class children — those who grew up at the 50th percentile — from Atlanta. 

[T]he researchers identified four broad factors that appeared to affect income mobility, including the size and dispersion of the local middle class. All else being equal, upward mobility tended to be higher in metropolitan areas where poor families were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods.

Income mobility was also higher in areas with more two-parent households, better elementary schools and high schools, and more civic engagement, including membership in religious and community groups. 

Regions with larger black populations had lower upward-mobility rates. But the researchers’ analysis suggested that this was not primarily because of their race. Both white and black residents of Atlanta have low upward mobility, for instance. 

In previous studies of mobility, economists have found that a smaller percentage of people escape childhood poverty in the United States than in several other rich countries, including Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. The latest study is consistent with those findings. 

That pattern makes economists more confident that the characteristics of different regions — as opposed to something inherent and unchangeable in the local residents — are helping cause the varying mobility rates. 

The Corelation Between Religiosity and Obesity, High Divorce Rates, and Teen Pregnancies

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Gallup has a new report on religiosity by state and not surprisingly, other than Utah and Oklahoma, all of the most religious states are in the Deep South.  Meanwhile, the least religious states clustered in the Northwest and in the Northeast.  In a related report, Gallup also found that the highest rates of obesity, lack of health insurance coverage and struggles to subsist were correlated to the most religious states.  First these findings on levels of religiosity (see the chart above as well):

Overall, 40% of Americans nationwide were classified as very religious in 2012 -- based on saying religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Thirty-one percent of Americans were nonreligious, saying religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 29% of Americans were moderately religious, saying religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services.

Eight of the top 10 religious states are in the South -- basically comprising the entire Southern belt from Georgia and the two Carolinas on the Atlantic coast through Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, to Louisiana and Arkansas in the west. The states outside the Southern belt are Utah -- with its strongly religious majority Mormon population -- and Oklahoma, which straddles the border between the South and the Midwest.

The 12 least religious states comprise the entirety of New England -- Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut -- along with the three most Northwestern states in the union, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, plus the District of Columbia, Nevada, and Hawaii.

As for social malaise correlating to the most religious states, there are these highilights:

Texas residents continue to be the most likely in the U.S. to lack health insurance (25.5%) in 2012 and those in Massachusetts remain least likely (4.1%).

One in four Mississippi residents report lacking enough money to buy the food they or their families needed at times in the last 12 months -- more than any other state in 2012. North Dakotans were the least likely to struggle to afford food, at 9.6%.

A majority of American adults in all 50 states are either overweight or obese in 2012. West Virginia residents are the most likely to fall into one of these weight groups (69.3%), while Coloradans are least likely (55.1%).

Obesity rates remain highest in many Southern and Midwestern states. Western and Northeastern states still boast the lowest obesity rates in the country. Diabetes and high blood pressure rates follow the same geographic pattern.

As this blog has noted frequently, states in the Bible Belt also have the highest divorce rates and the highest teen pregnancy rates.   Obviously, there is a major discontent between claimed religiosity and actual behavior.  Some might call the phenomenon rank hypocrisy.

New Hampshire Joins List of Gay Marriage States

And then there were six: New Hampshire has joined the five other states - principally in the Northeast - that have given same sex couples full civil marriage rights. Obviously, I believe that the New Hampshire legislature did the right thing in enacting the bill and at last granting full equality under the civil laws. True, there will wailing and the gnashing of teeth from the religious fascists of the Christian Right, but again their real agenda has nothing to do with "protecting marriage." Instead, it is all about keeping LGBT citizens stigmatized as less than equal citizens. As modified, the New Hampshire legislation protects religious denominations from having to perform or recognize same sex couples/marriage. Anyone who claims otherwise - and the Christianists surely will do so - is a liar. Here are some highlights from the New York Times:

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New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage after the Senate and House passed key language on religious rights and Gov. John Lynch -- who personally opposes gay marriage -- signed the legislation Wednesday afternoon. After rallies outside the Statehouse by both sides in the morning, the last of three bills in the package went to the Senate, which approved it 14-10 Wednesday afternoon.

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The New Hampshire law will take effect Jan. 1, exactly two years after the state began recognizing civil unions. The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, elected in New Hampshire in 2003 as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, was among those celebrating the new law. ''It's about being recognized as whole people and whole citizens,'' Robinson said. ''There are a lot of people standing here who when we grew up could not have imagined this,'' he said. ''You can't imagine something that is simply impossible. It's happened, in our lifetimes.''

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The revised bill added a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage. It also clarified that church-related organizations that serve charitable or educational purposes are exempt from having to provide insurance and other benefits to same-sex spouses of employees.

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The law will establish civil and religious marriage licenses and allow each party to the marriage to be identified as bride, groom or spouse. Same-sex couples already in civil unions will automatically be assumed to have a ''civil marriage.'' Churches will be able to decide whether to conduct religious marriages for same-sex couples. Civil marriages would be available to both heterosexual and same-sex couples. New Hampshire's decision leaves Rhode Island as the only New England state not to allow same-sex marriages.

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With Virginia being among the least progressive of states, I guess at some point the boyfriend and I will need to make a trip to New England to get married.