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Counties where children have the best opportunity for economic mobility in New Hampshire

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January 23, 2024
Wangkun Jia // Shutterstock

This story originally appeared on Wealth Enhancement Group and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.

Counties where children have the best opportunity for economic mobility in New Hampshire

Americans have long understood that their birthplace can significantly affect their futures, and academics have increasingly been able to connect tangible early life factors like where they live and the friendships they've cultivated with potential future income.

Among the most recent studies shedding light on what's known as economic mobility—a person's ability to move themselves and their families up the socioeconomic ladder over their lifetime—are a series of papers authored by Harvard University researchers leveraging vast troves of social networking data.

As part of a national analysis, Wealth Enhancement Group used data from Harvard University's Social Capital Atlas project to identify where in New Hampshire children have the best (and worst) chances at upward economic mobility.

The research draws on a privacy-protected dataset representing 21 billion friendships from Facebook made public through its parent company Meta's Data for Good project. It also uses anonymous tax records, according to the authors. The scholars assigned a score to locales according to how economically connected low- and high-income people living in the area have historically been over at least a decade, per that data. The dataset does not include scores for about 180 of the 3,000 or so counties in the U.S.

The research attempts to fill in the gaps of previous efforts to study American economic mobility that did not consider a person's vast social networks nor their importance in creating better lives for themselves and their children.

It turns out the ability to cultivate friendships linking people of different socioeconomic backgrounds with one another is the strongest factor in determining whether a child can surpass the earning potential of their parents, Harvard researchers found. They call this economic connectedness.

Read on to find out where economic connectedness is strongest in your state.

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#10. Coös County

- Economic connectedness: 0.91
- Median Income: $52,054
- Population: 31,360
--- 95.5% white
--- 2.2% Black
--- 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 0.1% Asian
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#9. Sullivan County

- Economic connectedness: 0.96
- Median Income: $64,587
- Population: 43,105
--- 95.7% white
--- 0.6% Black
--- 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 0.7% Asian
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#8. Hillsborough County

- Economic connectedness: 1.05
- Median Income: $86,930
- Population: 420,504
--- 86.4% white
--- 2.8% Black
--- 0.1% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 4.2% Asian
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#7. Cheshire County

- Economic connectedness: 1.08
- Median Income: $69,360
- Population: 76,473
--- 94.4% white
--- 0.8% Black
--- 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 0.8% Asian
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#6. Carroll County

- Economic connectedness: 1.08
- Median Income: $70,873
- Population: 49,961
--- 96% white
--- 0.5% Black
--- 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 0.8% Asian
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#5. Belknap County

- Economic connectedness: 1.08
- Median Income: $75,035
- Population: 63,395
--- 95.3% white
--- 0.6% Black
--- 0.3% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 1.2% Asian
7 / 10
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#4. Grafton County

- Economic connectedness: 1.09
- Median Income: $73,755
- Population: 91,025
--- 90.7% white
--- 1.3% Black
--- 0.2% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 3.6% Asian
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#3. Merrimack County

- Economic connectedness: 1.13
- Median Income: $82,457
- Population: 152,983
--- 92.7% white
--- 1.6% Black
--- 0.3% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 1.9% Asian
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#2. Strafford County

- Economic connectedness: 1.13
- Median Income: $76,560
- Population: 130,598
--- 90.7% white
--- 1.1% Black
--- 0% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 3.2% Asian
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Wangkun Jia // Shutterstock

#1. Rockingham County

- Economic connectedness: 1.36
- Median Income: $101,683
- Population: 312,771
--- 93% white
--- 0.9% Black
--- 0.1% American Indian and Alaska Native
--- 2.1% Asian

This story features data reporting and writing by Dom DiFurio and is part of a series utilizing data automation across 50 states.

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