Big college town (Pittsburgh: median income, statistics, retirement)

[nuwaver88]

Those poor college students.Regional Insights: Students and seniors make city seem poor

[dugdogmaster]

Originally Posted by nuwaver88

Those poor college students.Regional Insights: Students and seniors make city seem poor

Yeah, the original article concerning this was very misleading

[Katiana]

Well, in re: the senior citizens, they are lower-income than working people. So if that pushes Pgh's median income down, it is an effect of having a large elderly population. I don't quite get the author's point.

[BrianTH]

I found some of that interesting (although I have described parts of Pittsburgh as an overgrown college town before, it hadn't occurred to me that this would have an affect on income statistics). But generally, there is little point in comparing central city economic statistics in the first place.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Well, in re: the senior citizens, they are lower-income than working people. So if that pushes Pgh's median income down, it is an effect of having a large elderly population. I don't quite get the author's point.

Well, I think part of the author's point is that overall median income statistics are not necessarily reflective of the median income statistics for people during their post-college and pre-retirement years. So, for example, one practical takeaway would be that a person in that middle range who was trying to gauge their economic prospects in a particular locale should not look at overall median income statistics, but rather median income statistics just for the appropriate age cohort.

With respect to the City of Pittsburgh in particular, it seems to be unusual on both sides, meaning it has a disproportionate number of people both in college and post-retirement. But as noted above, I don't really think there is much point in looking at economic statistics for the City proper anyway (as the author notes, the City proper isn't a meaningful economic unit).