These are the 11 cities where you can earn more money than your parents

Megan Sauer -

If you don't have rich parents, the difference between taking the bus and taking a private jet could depend on where you grow up.

That is what indicates a study published Monday in the scientific journal

in two parts.

Researchers analyzed 21 billion friendships on Facebook and found that children are more likely to move up the social and professional ladder if they are friends with children from families with higher incomes.

And this kind of socioeconomic mix is ​​more common in some parts of the country than others, the study notes.

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The study authors measured “social connectedness”—the significant interaction between rich and poor residents—in counties across the country and found that “if children with low-income parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectivity comparable to that of the child average with high-income parents, their income in adulthood would increase by 20% on average”.

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The study also noted that the value of social connectedness "is equal to the difference in median outcomes between a child growing up in a family earning $47,000 a year versus $27,000."

Of the 200 largest counties in the country, these are the eleven largest cities in the study where such social connectivity thrives

San Francisco leads the way: Residents are about 80% more likely to engage with high-income people, and the poorest are 6% more likely to strike up a friendship with someone from a higher-income household, according to the study.

The reason has nothing to do with admiring your friends' fancy cars or designer handbags.

According to the study, wealthy parents often devote resources to teaching their children about networking, applying for jobs, and acquiring a range of professional skills, and children tend to share what they learn with the people around them.

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Matthew Jackson, a Stanford economics professor and one of the study's authors, said several factors could explain why the phenomenon is more common in some cities than others, from the size of local high schools to the particular attitudes of particular communities. .

One of the biggest factors is the median income of a city's residents: San Francisco households are $119,000 a year, according to the US Census. By comparison, Cameron County, Texas—a one of the worst cities in the country for social connectedness, according to the study—has a median household income of $41,200 a year.

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“Oftentimes the areas that are really [socially connected] are mostly rich people,” Jackson told CNBC, “I think that's one of the challenges: How do you build these connections in areas where it's predominantly rich people? poor?"

Jackson also assured that the financial segregation of the richest and poorest communities comes into play.

If people with different income levels don't live in the same neighborhoods, they will interact less.

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This investigation is not a closed book.

For example, Jackson said he's still trying to figure out why Minneapolis seems so much more socially connected than Indianapolis, even though the demographics of the two Midwestern cities are similar.

“It's hard to know exactly what's causing [that difference] and how much depends on the culture,” Jackson said.

"I think we'd like to know a lot more about what exactly can foster these bonds between classes," she added.

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Jackson said he hopes more data can help lift more people out of poverty.

“This data can help school administrators and community leaders understand why people aren't connecting, and hopefully influence policy,” he said.

“But this is an ongoing project.

Now that the scale of this data and its richness are available to many researchers, we hope to start answering all kinds of questions,” he concluded.