Health & Fitness
Census Results - What Do They Reveal About Our Communities?
Do families headed by married couples and those with high levels of education contribute to safe communities and top-flight public school systems?
A local newspaper recently carried an interesting story in which census results pertaining to local communities were revealed. Among the findings are the following:
About 79 percent of people 25 and older in Fox Chapel have at least a bachelor’s degree, one of the highest rates in the metro area.
About 70 percent of men in Upper St. Clair and 70 percent of women in Fox Chapel are married, some of the highest rates in the area.
About 20 percent of the men and women in McKees Rocks are married, one of the lowest rates.
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Fox Chapel and Upper Saint Clair are known as desirable, safe places to live and as areas in which the public schools and their students are among the finest in the nation. McKees Rocks is an area in which the crime rate is relatively high and is a community which is not known for the quality of its schools or for student achievement.
What, if anything, are we to glean from the census figures? It is difficult to draw conclusions from a few pieces of raw data, but a reasonable theory would be that families in which individuals are married and highly educated make for stable, strong, safe communities.
