Latinos are Well-Represented in Both the Most & Least Educated Cities in the U.S.

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Having an education, quite frankly, is very important. A person’s education level determines much about how their life will unfold. Education is associated with overall health, income level, career paths, access to resources, and housing.

More and more Latinos are finding their way into two- and four-year colleges and universities, making great strides in education.

As more and more schools develop programming to help Latino students succeed, the number of Latino college graduates is expected to steadily rise.

The Economic Policy Institute proposed a theory stating that college degree holders earn more money and thus contribute more to a city’s tax base over time.

With this in mind, the financial website WalletHub recently analyzed the 150 largest metropolitan areas in the United States to determine which of these represented the “most educated” cities in the country.

WalletHub used nine key factors to determine which areas were the most educated; these factors include the number of adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher to the overall quality of the public school systems in the area.

Based on the findings, the city of Ann Arbor, MI (4.44% Latino population), home to the University of Michigan, was named the most educated in the United States. Ann Arbor ranked first in both Educational Attainment and the Quality of Education & Attainment Gap metrics.

Rounding out the top five is the Washington, DC-Arlington, VA-Alexandria, MD metro area (12.26%) followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (30.99%), Durham-Chapel Hill, NC (12.36%), and Madison, WI (7%).

Conversely, the list noted the least educated cities in the country. These findings point an especially starker picture for Latinos as several major metro areas along the U.S./Mexico border were highly represented.

According to WalletHub, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (85.77% Latino population) was the least educated city in the country. The area came in 150^th on the Educational Attainment and 104^th on the Quality of Education & Attainment Gap metrics.

Rounding out the bottom five is the Brownsville-Harlingen, TX (90.1%) metro area, Visalia-Porterville, CA (47.56%), Bakersfield, CA (47.45%), and Modesto, CA (37.54%).

Madison had the highest number of high school graduates living in the area while McAllen-Edinburg-Mission had the least. Ann Arbor ranked first in the percentage of bachelor’s degree holders in the area while Visalia-Porterville had the lowest percentage.

Read more about the link between education & health here:

• Collaboration between city leaders & schools is essential to health & education equity. #SaludAmerica https://goo.gl/9dnisY
• A study from @ChildTrends says #Latino kids start school 3 mos. behind in math! #SaludAmerica #Education http://salud.to/2ooKfry