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| NPR: Best and Worst Places. |
"The best and worst places to live if you only care about money"
Medford was on the list.
The NPR article is based on two papers authored by Stanford Economist Rebecca Diamond and Berkeley's Cecile Gaubert and Enrico Moretti, based on data form 2014. Spatial Sorting and Inequality and Where is Standard of Living the Highest.
The studies' methodology intentionally avoided subjective things like the climate, traffic, and beaches. They look at economic value: The incomes people earned in a place compared to the cost of living there. Is it "worth it" to take a high-paying job in a city if it costs a lot more to live there? The studies observed that incomes are higher in the Bay Area, Boston, and New York, and costs are higher, but in those cases, yes, it was worth it. Incomes were enough better.
They examined inexpensive places, and featured Natchez, Mississippi as a place where incomes are low but costs are even lower, so money goes farthest. It is the country's best "deal." McAllen, Houston, and Beaumont, Texas were also good.
Here is what NPR reported to be the least affordable place for a college graduate, after comparing local incomes and costs:
The five places with the lowest standard of living for college graduates:
Medford, Oregon
Provo, Utah
Salem, Oregon
Olympia, Washington
Asheville, North Carolina
Then, for people who had not graduated from college:
The five places with the lowest standard of living for those with only a high school diploma:
Asheville, North Carolina
San Diego, California
Manhattan, Kansas
Medford, Oregon
Jacksonville, North Carolina
What is going on with Medford?
The studies evaluated 443 "commuting zones" representing 96.3% of the U.S. population. NPR's links lead eventually to the Stanford working papers which included the basis for the city rankings but not the rankings that include Medford. Therefore, my source for ranking Medford is NPR not the papers themselves. The papers are data-rich and quantitative.
Some of the studies' observations are obvious and intuitive. People with high skills are drawn to places with high productivity and high salaries, and costs are higher. High real estate costs trickle down to haircuts and car washes and everything else. However, the "Spatial Sorting" paper explains why a place might break that pattern and be an outlier of high costs without high income:
A last important difference across geographic locations is the local amenities that they provide, which directly impact quality-of-life. Diamond (2016) highlighted that local amenities influence location choices, especially for the high skill[ed employee]. . ..Taken together with our environmental quality results, these results suggest that we see a transformation away from “production cities” towards “production and consumer cities” offering both high wages and better amenities (albeit at higher housing costs). . .. Spatial sorting of college workers was initially strongly directed at high-wage locations, but is now increasingly directed at high-amenity locations.
Medford, Oregon doesn't "make sense" as a place to live based on incomes, but it is a pleasant place to live, at least when there isn't forest-fire smoke. People like to retire here, or live here and work remotely. There are other pleasant places in the U.S. so why might Medford be an outlier among outliers, the very worst value?
I don't have Stanford research data, but I have a 30-year career's worth of anecdotes as a Financial Advisor. I suspect local realtors have their own versions of the same anecdotes. Medford is a refuge for Californians who retire here or work remotely from here. Prices are high for real estate in the Medford area because "crazy Californians" from the Bay Area think our home costs are ridiculously cheap. They come to escape the traffic and crowds. They bid up and buy houses for cash, with the money from their California home sale windfall, and have more left over to invest. Directly or indirectly, they bring the high-productivity and high-income costs of the Bay Area here. Some people blame Californians. They skew the income/cost structure here, and many people who earn their money here are disadvantaged. (Not Financial Advisors. They are hugely advantaged by that infusion of investable money.) California pension and dividend checks are a nice clean industry for this area.
The bad news for locals is that Medford is expensive, if one is trying to pay for it with a Medford job. The good news is that it is expensive because this is an unusually nice place to live.
8 comments:
My thoughts on this are that Medford was originally a rural farm/lumber town and hasn't developed any meaningful industry despite the influx of money. It would seem to be a great valley for clean tech and manufacturing, but we don't see it. What we have instead is pot. Local developers have made out building all those subdivisions in Central Point where they might have built industrial parks and attracted companies with good paying jobs.
Retirement towns have a lot in common with resorts, with essentially a two class economy and service industry jobs. What's the difference between Ashland and Vail?
We moved here in the early 80’s, and Medford was an unusually nice place to live. The summers could get far too hot, but it was relatively brief and it cooled off at night. We could open the windows at night and close them during the day. Not anymore.
Now the heat drags on and on, compounded by incessant smoke and sometimes fires right in the valley. Wells and reservoirs are running dry. Medford is fast becoming a place that’s both too expensive and not so nice.
It’s a good thing climate change it just a hoax or we’d really be in trouble.
Something important I've seen mentioned about the article is it masks the fact that the study was about metropolitan areas, not cities. Even if they thinly gloss over the word and ultimately call them "commuter zones" they paint a slightly biased picture. The metropolitan area for Medford is literally the entirety of both Jackson and Josephine counties, comprising over 300,000 people.
NPR did what it did best, like all modern media seems to enjoy doing. That is, their readers actually believe and openly discuss this as a problem with the city of Medford and maybe a few close municipal neighbors. In fact this is mainly about the 220,000+ other bi-county residents. NPR has great writers, but great writers can do wonderful things with weak data. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
And the fact that a group managed to get 4 years of grants to filter a handful of Census Bureau tables, in which a few kids could have done the same for a weekend high school project, is something we as people should be taking a second look at.
Ashland has a University ?
If high school kids could have done this, Brian, why didn't you sign up?
I've seen a lot of people crunch data. Some have even been accurate.
Many journalists do not understand data and their limitations.
Brian's post does what NPR's critics do best: impugn their data without any of his own. His comment would be more credible if it were supported by something besides speculation.
Mike, it is Stanford's data, not NPR's. My primary criticism is with the weak reporting of the data results, and yes it is directed at modern NPR. I in no way suggested the data was wrong or that I had better information.
You're quick to defend shoddy reporting with ad hominem so allow me a tu quoque: why do you bother to read comments on the internet at all?
Brian, you're quick to take offense at being contradicted and call it "ad hominem," so allow me an ad quaestionem respondendum quaestio: What did I say that isn't true?
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