Creative Class

Just finished a new paper in what’s become an interesting – and fun – new area for me. Our research examines the factors that are associated with smoking and obesity – two significant health problems and contributors to leading causes of death.

There’s been a lot of research on smoking and obesity among individuals and some which looks at geographic patterns. Still, what we find is interesting. There is considerable variation in smoking and obesity across states. And smoking and obesity are both closely associated with post-industrial socioeconomis structures, that is high levels of knowledge; professional, creative work; and high levels of college-educated adults. The results holds even when we control for the level of economic output.

What this all seems to mean is that places that have transitioned to postindustrialism go beyond economics and innovation. In addition to generating better-paying jobs and having higher levels of income and innovation, these sorts of places appear to have better health outcomes as well, and they do so in ways that go beyond the effects of just higher levels of economic output. The effects of these structures work in addition to the effects of Gross State Product per capita. The full paper is here.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in America. More than 72 million American adults are obese, according to estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics. But obesity varies greatly by state. The map below, from the Centers from Disease Control (CDC), shows the obesity rate for the 50 states, measured as the share of people with a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30 which the CDC classifies as “obese.”

A week or so ago, I looked at the relationship between smoking and a variety of economic, social, and health factors. With a helpful analytical hand from Charlotta Mellander, we found that smoking was significantly correlated with obesity as well as being correlated with education levels, class structure, and other factors. So, we decided to take a quick look at the state-level factors that might be associated with obesity. We ran some simple correlations and scatter-plots between state obesity rates and these factors. As usual, we point out that correlation does not imply causality, but simply points to associations between variables. Still, a number of interesting things stand out.

It should come as little surprise that states with higher levels of obesity have significantly higher rates of death from cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular diseases like hypertension. There is a significant correlation between obesity and death rates from cancer (.7), heart disease (.7), and cerebrovascular disease (.7).

It might be, however, that states with greater percentages of obesity are those where people pay less attention to their health generally or are more likely to engage in risky behavior. And that’s what we find at least in the case of smoking which correlates highly with state levels of obesity (.8).

Might obesity be related to states’ broader social and psychological climates? To get at this, we looked at the relationship between obesity and a commonly used measure of subjective well-being or happiness developed by the Gallup Organization. Obesity is negatively associated with state happiness (with a correlation of -.6). Since these correlations only reflect associations between variables and not causality, it’s hard to say whether this reflects the fact that happier people eat less, are healthier, or are less prone to obesity, or if unhappier people eat more, are unhealthier, or are somehow more prone to obesity, or if both obesity and happiness levels reflect something else. To get at this, we look at the associations between state obesity rates and social and demographic factors below.

Common sense would suggest that more affluent people would have lower levels of obesity and poorer ones higher, and we find such an association. Obesity is correlated with income levels (-.6) and more moderately so with economic output, measured as gross state product per capita (-.4).

One would think that states with greater concentrations of more highly educated people have lower levels of obesity, and that is what we find. States with higher levels of human capital, measured as the percentage of adults with a college degree, have lower levels of obesity (the correlation being -.8).

To what extent does obesity reflect the kind of work people do? We examine the relationships between obesity and three classes of jobs – creative/professional/knowledge jobs, blue-collar working class jobs, and standardized service class jobs like those in food processing and home health care. Obesity is strongly associated with the share of working class jobs (with a correlation of .7). Obesity is negatively correlated with the share of creative class jobs (-.6). Obesity is also negatively correlated with the share of service class jobs (-.4), though more moderately so.

Obesity is lower in states with higher concentrations of artists, musicians, and entertainers (with a correlation of-.6), those with larger concentrations of gays and lesbians (-.5), and immigrants (-.5). This likely reflects broader structural characteristics of those states, as more highly educated states also tend to be more tolerant and open to diversity.

One in five Americans continue to smoke cigarettes, according to a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The smoking rate varies from low of 9.2 percent in Utah to a high of 26.6 percent in West Virginia. The map below, from the Wall Street Journal, shows the smoking rate by state.

The data are interesting and they allow us to look at the extent to which smoking is associated with all sorts of things, from more obvious ones like cancer and heart disease to the economic and demographic characteristics of states with higher or lower levels of smoking and even the relationship between smoking and happiness. With a helpful analytical assist from my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we decided to take a quick look. We ran some simple correlations and scatter-plots between state smoking rates and these factors. As usual, we point out that correlation does not imply causality, but simply points to associations between variables. Still, a number of interesting things stand out.

It will come as little surprise that states with higher levels of smoking have significantly higher rates of death from cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular diseases like hypertension.  There is a significant correlation between state smoking rates and death rates from cancer (.75), heart disease (.67), and cerebrovascular disease (.59).

It might be, however, that states with greater percentages of smokers are those where people pay less attention to their health generally or are more likely to engage in risky behavior. Consider the relationship between state smoking rates and their levels of obesity, where we find significant association both for obesity among adults (.68) and children (.57).

Might smoking be related to states’ broader social and psychological climates? To get at this, we looked at the relationship between smoking and a commonly used measure of subjective well-being or happiness developed by the Gallup Organization. Smoking is negatively associated with state happiness (with a correlation of -.71). Since these correlations only reflect associations between variables and not causality, it’s hard to say whether this reflects the fact that happier people smoke less or unhappier ones smoke more, or that both smoking and happiness levels reflect something else. To get at this, we look at the associations between state smoking levels and social and demographic factors below.

Common sense would suggest that more affluent people would smoke less and poorer ones would smoke more, but that’s not what the data indicate – at least when comparing states. State smoking levels are not related to state income levels or to Gross State Product per capita; the correlations for both are not statistically significant.

One would think that more highly educated people smoke less. And that is borne out by our analysis. Smoking is reasonably associated with education levels, measured as the percentage of adults with a college degree (with a negative correlation of -.76).

To what extent does smoking reflect the kind of work people do? We examine the relationships between smoking levels and three classes of jobs – creative/professional/ knowledge jobs, blue-collar working class jobs, and standardized service class jobs like those in food processing and home health care. The strongest association is with working class jobs, with a correlation of .5: Smoking is higher in states with a greater concentration of these blue-collar jobs. Smoking is also associated with service class jobs. But here the correlation is negative (-.62). Smoking does not appear to be associated with knowledge-professional-creative jobs, the correlation here is not statistically significant.

That said, smoking rate is associated with concentrations of artists, musicians, and entertainers. Contrary to the stereotypical image of cigarette-puffing bohemians or hipsters, smoking is less prevalent in states with more of these artistic types: The correlation is negative (-.50), and about the same as for education.

Lastly, smoking is negatively correlated with larger concentrations of gays and lesbians, as well as immigrants (both with correlations of roughly -.45). This likely reflects broader structural characteristics of those states, as more highly educated states also tend to be more tolerant and open to diversity.

There’s no shortage of lists of the world’s happiest nations or of the happiest of the 50 U.S. states. The folks at the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index have also compiled detailed happiness scores for America’s 435 Congressional Districts (see the map below).

The table below shows the 10 highest-scoring and the 10 lowest-scoring congressional districts on the Well-Being Index. The table speaks for itself. The happiest districts are among the most affluent in the nation. Six of the top 10 are affluent and physically magnificent California communities. The least happy districts are mainly places of extreme disadvantage, inner-city neighborhoods in Detroit, Cleveland, South Philly, the Bronx, or Appalachia. There are a couple of slight anomalies – wealthy Grosse Point, Michigan, is lumped together with poor inner-city Detroit neighborhoods (wonder why that would be?), and given the devastation of greater Detroit it’s not surprising that even the rich would be less happy then elsewhere. And hipster Williamsburg is lumped together with Bed-Stuy: But, then again, whoever said hipsters were happy…

Paul Kennedy famously argued that imperial overstretch — that is devoting too much money and resources to military uses — plays a central role in the decline of great powers, including the United States. But it looks like America’s growing obesity epidemic is reducing the pool of capable recruits, according to this story in The Washington Post (via Dana Goldstein).

About 75 percent of the country’s 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service, largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces, according to a report to be issued Thursday.

Other factors, such as drug use, criminal records and mental problems, contribute to what military leaders say is a major problem that threatens the country’s ability to defend itself at a time when the all-volunteer force is already strained fighting two wars.

Money quote:

When you get kids who can’t do push-ups, pull-ups or run, this is a fundamental problem not just for the military but for the country,” said Curtis Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions policy. Many kids are not “taking physical education in school; they’re more interested in sedentary activities such as the computer or television. And we have a fast-food mentality in this country.”

Childhood obesity varies considerably across the fifty states and reflects some straightforward economic and demographic patterns, according to a basic correlation analysis by my colleague Charlotta Mellander. Childhood obesity, not surprisingly, reflects adult obesity (with a correlation of .54). It is also more prevalent in states with large working class populations (.4). It is less likely in states with higher income levels (-.32), greater concentrations of the creative class (-.37), and especially those with higher levels of adults with college degrees (-.64).

Photo Credit: Flickr User Seattle Municipal Archives

Last week, the Pew Research Center recently released its report on marriage in America. Based on data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey for 2008, it provides a wealth of data on marriage and divorce across the 50 states. Check out the map here. Catherine Rampell provides a nice summary over at Economix.

The thing that jumped out at me was the “Larry King” statistic – the number of people who have been married three or more times.

About one-in-twenty Americans who ever have been married said they had been married three or more times. That comes to 4 million men and 4.5 million women.

States varied a lot on this. Arkansas had the highest percentage of “serial marrieds,” 10 percent. This was five times more than New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts with just two percent. The study found that multiple marriages were less likely in states with high concentrations of college-educated people, and more likely in states with lower incomes and smaller college-educated populations.

Over the weekend, I enlisted my number-crunching colleague Charlotta Mellander to look at what other factors might be related to such serial marriage. We looked at unemployment, the class composition of the workforce, immigration, gay population, religion, and levels of psychological well-being. Our analysis points to associations and not causal relationships. It shows that a relationship exists, but not that one causes the other.

Class: Serial marriage was less likely in states with high creative class concentrations (a correlation coefficient of -.59). Conversely, it was was much more likely in working class states (.63). The effect of class was about the same as for income (-.58) and human capital (-.65). When we controlled for income, the association between class and marriage remained significant (-.33 for the creative class and .39 for the working class). Class appears to have a relationship to multiple marriage which is distinct from income.

Immigrants, Gays, and Bohemians: Multiple marriage was significantly less likely in states with high immigrant concentrations (-.38), though the association was less than for class. Bohemians: Multiple marriage was also less likely in states with high bohemian concentrations (-.49). So much for the libertine bohemian lifestyle – at least when it comes to multiple marriage that is. There was no correlation between multiple marriage and the share of the gay population.

Religion: The Pew study did not a strong correlation between religion -  measured as the percentage of people who said religion was “very important” in their lives – and marriage or divorce patterns. Our association suggests at least a moderate one. Religion was positively associated with multiple marriage (.43). Multiple marriage was more likely in more religious states

Well-Being: Multiple marriage was less likely in states with high levels of psychological well-being (-.37).

When I went grocery shopping last week, “sunflowers” were on my list, but with details. I was looking for non-variegated yellow petals and black centers (my wife has a much better artistic sense than I do, so I sometimes get these kinds of instructions). When I got there nothing exactly matched the description so I whipped out my iPhone, took a picture of the sunflowers they had, emailed it home, and called my wife. She said those were fine so I picked them up and, feeling very pleased with myself for my new-media savvy, turned around to find that someone had walked off with the cart that had my shopping list in it. While I was focused on the e-world, the real world had gone ahead without me.

This reminded me of a recent cab ride. We were at the airport and got in a taxi. I told the driver the address and what route to take – a well-known shortcut I had learned years ago when I drove a cab. He was flustered and angry because he didn’t know where I was talking about going – he usually just entered an address into his onboard computer, which gave him a route with instructions. He didn’t actually know where he was. I realized that this isn’t unusual, many cabbies don’t learn their city anymore because they don’t have to. Another disconnect from reality.

As with Wendy’s recent post about Blackberries in meetings, it looks like the ubiquitous electronic virtual reality is disconnecting us from the world we live in. From people walking down the street listening to earphones, to drivers talking on cell phones, more and more we’re not in touch with what’s happening right around us. We’re dependent on Google or Wikipedia for information, or GPS for directions, or e-mail and texting for communicating with people in the same building.

What does this mean for our ability to live and work in the real world? Are we losing the ability to find our way and work out solutions on our own? Are computers making us stupid?

Social media, communications technologies, and more flexible workplace attitudes have been driving changes to the way we view our personal and professional lives.

A recent Knowledge at Wharton article examines the evolving etiquette as well as challenges surrounding the rise of mobile technologies, such as the Blackberry, as well as social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

As Facebook, Twitter and 24-hour Blackberry access blur the lines between business and personal lives, managers and employees are struggling to develop new social norms to guide them through the ongoing evolution of communications technology. Wharton faculty and other experts say the process of creating rules to cope with the ever-expanding reach of modern communications has just begun, but will be shaped largely by individuals and organizations, not top-down decrees from a digital Emily Post. Generational differences in the approach to openness on the Internet will also be a factor in coming to common understandings of how and when it is appropriate to contact colleagues, superiors or clients.

The article then details some dilemmas – where do you stand?

1.  First, is there a time when “work” should stop and “personal life” should take over?  From the Wharton article:

For example, a Blackberry can allow parents to attend their childrens’ soccer games while remaining in contact with colleagues at the office in case an emergency comes up. But, [Nancy Rothbard] adds, “you have your Blackberry at your kid’s soccer game. That’s another … line you may be crossing.”

2.  Is it healthy to blur your personal self and professional self ?

…says Wharton marketing professor Patricia Williams, “There is the self we are for our friends, a self for our family [and] a professional self. What’s interesting is the degree to which we are comfortable playing all of those ’selves’ at one time.”

“I’ve heard people say that Facebook is for personal friends and LinkedIn is for professional contacts,” Williams notes. “But many of my Facebook friends are my colleagues – people who work just down the hall – and I don’t have a problem with that. I do, however, have some discomfort being ‘Facebook friends’ with my students, because it gives them access to my personal self that’s not normally available to them.”

3. Are younger people, today’s children up through college students, growing up with no separation between these different “selves”?  And what will this mean for the way we work?

Typically, business norms evolve through official policy disseminated by organizations and by “reality” that bubbles up from the organization’s grassroots. [Wharton Professor Monica McGrath] asks “The question is: How accessible do you want to be? [Today,] young people want to be very accessible, and in an international corporation you are expected to be available [around the clock]. Time zones mean nothing. The norms will continue to develop based upon generational leadership.”

To sum up, I expect that the line between personal and professional will become increasingly blurred. First, knowledge work is highly collaborative and it’s hard to work with people who you don’t like – therefore, people will forge friends through collaboration at work. Second, younger generations will have grown up with limited separation between their different personas.

How do mobile and social media technologies enhance or detract from your personal and professional life?

Richard was the keynote speaker alongside Governor Charlie Crist at the 42nd Annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Miami Beach last month. Several business, state, and regional officials turned out to discuss the future of Florida. According to Visit Florida, “Tourism is one of Florida’s top industries. In 2007, approximately 84.5 million visitors to Florida generated $65.5 billion in taxable sales, $3.9 billion in state taxes, and employed 991,300 Florida residents.”

What are your thoughts on Florida tourism given the state of the economy?

Governor Charlie Crist

Richard Florida Keynote address at the 42nd Annual Governor's Conference on Tourism

State Representative Joe Gibbons

Stress is a fundamental fact of life these days. But which parts of the country have the most stressed-out people?

The map below from the the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey shows the stress levels for each of the 50 states. The map reflects the fraction of survey respondents who said they experienced stress “during a lot of the day yesterday” between January and June 2009.