My students and I had a good laugh this week about the Apple watch commentary in the press. A great deal of the discussion originated from this Bloomberg article. The general notion from the article is that you will “want one, but not need one.” This got a pretty serious discussion going about a few issues: 1) the state of consumerism in the U.S. (and the world today) and, 2) the effects of disruptive innovations on markets.
The Census Bureau released a paper (citation below, link here) attempting a correction of sorts for the poverty level in counties and cities with a university. Specifically, the paper looks at the poverty rates with and without college students living without their families and off campus. What they find is a significant difference for some communities. That is, for some of the communities, when you exclude these students you get a significantly lower poverty rate. This is not too surprising really when you consider the rationale for many attending college is to increase their lifetime income. Continue reading College Students & Local Area Poverty Rates