If Tulsa wants to achieve Mayor G.T. Bynum’s goal of boosting per capita income, computers dictate the city should work to increase high school graduation rates.
Community nonprofit Tulsa Data Science let their computers analyze Census data with minimal human input to see which factors have the biggest impact on an area’s per capita income. While their analysis found each doctorate degree holder in a Census tract increases its per capita income by $468, there’s another correlation where the demographic is easier to improve.
"For every dropout, or someone who's only completed 11th grade, you're actually losing $217 in that city tract," said Tulsa Data Science's Steve Green. "So, from there, that perspective is that people who drop out of high school are actually costing the tract money, and that's decreasing the per capita income."
Green said the city should adopt policies to boost high school graduation rates.
"We want our kids graduating from high school, and if we can get our kids graduating from high school and we can increase per capita income of a tract, everybody wins," Green said.
City Chief of Performance Strategy and Innovation James Wagner said higher per capita income isn’t the goal in and of itself.
"The more resource people have, the more they can access things like health care and things that really create quality of life," Wagner said.
The computer analysis also found every professional degree holder boosts a tract’s per capita income $206, and every white bachelor's degree holder boosts a tract's per capita income $26. Green said the focus on white bachelor's degree holders is a function of the computer's analysis, not a result of human action.
