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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

This map should be filtered or adjusted for universities/students somehow. If you zoom in on my city (San Luis Obispo, CA), you'd think 30% of the entire city lived below the poverty line. This isn't true (our median home price is approaching $600K) so I can only imagine it's skewed by Cal Poly students.

I'm no expert in statistics but the picture this map paints is misleading IMO.

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Anecdotes don't mean much, unfortunately I can think of four local universities surrounded by a cloud of extreme poverty.

The lifecycle seems to be new city starts building out, put a university in the new, good neighborhoods, wait 100 years and those neighborhoods are now the inner city with spectacular crime and poverty.

The same low rents and low quality housing that attract students would logically tend to attract poor people. The same dumpy loft that seems perfect for a physics student would also seem financially perfect for a poor person.

Note that I'm talking about traditional student housing, not the ultra expensive school loan inspired facilities.

You know, that's actually really insightful and has brought sudden clarity to the paradox of poverty "donuts" that circle a number of city universities I know about.

Even if students are spending $50k+ per year on school, very little of it makes its way out into the neighboring economy.

The area around Oklahoma University shows 85%, and I was trying to get my head around that (as it's blocks from here). The first explanation I thought of was, This has to be wrong.

Most traditional 4-year students wouldn't be counted in your area. Their permanent residences are likely with the parents.

Check Stanford. 30% of the population reported within poverty.

I permanently rented an apartment for 4 of the 5 years I was in college why wasn't that my address? I lived there full time yes during summer.

I don't think it is. Those poor students affect the environment and life in that region just like everybody else.

Yes, they affect "the environment and life in that region", but not in the same way a perennially poor family would.

Students are _very_ different than working poor. The working poor's income is close to their expenditures. Most Student's 'income' will be reported as near zero. However, their expenditures into the economy are above that, through tuition payments and lodging. Also, they are likely to have additional spending money that is outside of reported income.

Much of their expenditure goes to the University though, and to my knowledge little of that flows back to the city. The University often winds up sequestering large amounts of wealth even as the city around begins to deteriorate.

This map is based on income.

If you're a "poor" student who isn't working, but getting money from your parents or via student loan, you're not the same as a poor working person.

>so I can only imagine it's skewed by Cal Poly students

It's not skewed, those students really live there, so that's what it is.

It's skewed because many students are still dependent on their parents. An example is Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. Because of the low population density, the students have more weight in pulling down the average income. The area is marked has having a high poverty rate. But many of these students drive expensive cars like late model BMWs. They are most certainly not poor.

Agreed, same story near UCLA

Yeah, my sister lives right down the street from UCLA, it didn't strike me as having 40%+ poverty along westwood ave.

Yup. The poverty line for an individual is $11,490 in gross income. That's going to cut out most students. Edit: Federal poverty line.

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