Creative Class

Digital technology from myspace.com to a recording studio on your laptop means that music can literally be made and distributed anytime, anyplace, and anywhere.  But it is also clear that a great deal of music continues to come out of particular cities and their music scenes.

The graph below, from a new study from my colleagues at the Martin Prosperity Institute ranks the major music locations in the U.S. and Canada. Even before I moved to Toronto I was aware of the musical talent that comes out of Canada: from classic rockers like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to Rush’s brand of rock and pop stars like Nelly Furtado or indie darlings New Pornographers, Arcade Fire, and Feist. So our team at the Institute decided to see what the numbers might tell us about differences between the Canada and U.S. music industries.

The rankings are based on location quotients which gauge the relative concentration of music industry establishments, including record labels, distributors, recording studios, and music publishers.

Interestingly enough, half the top 15 cities are  Canadian. Still, the  United States is home to the two top-ranked cities – Nashville which is literally off-the-chart on this measure and Los Angeles, the center for global entertainment.  Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal all out-rank New York on this score. Atlanta makes the top 15 as do college towns like Austin and Madison, Wisconsin. U.S. establishments are  considerably bigger than their Canadian counterparts, with average receipts of $4.1 million per establishment, nearly eight times the Canadian average of $540,000. But, Canada in fact has about five times the level of music establishments after controlling for population, 5.9 music establishments per $100,000 compared to 1.2 for the U.S.

The full report is here.

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

Andy Warhol’s famous 1968 quote, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” has not yet come true, but the spirit of it is manifested in the world of cyberspace. At least everyone has the opportunity and the platform to become world-famous.

The United Breaks Guitars phenomenon is well-documented. The main story is that  a clever video with outstanding production value even though it was created on a shoestring describes how a checked guitar belonging to Dave Carroll was broken by baggage handlers. The video has been viewed almost six million times and the Sons of Maxwell have been elevated from a talented but relatively unknown band into a much bigger deal. The song itself reached #1 on the Country and Western charts in the U.K., iTunes sales skyrocketed and, yes, the guitar situation was finally resolved.

But, you probably already knew about the Taylor Guitar if you spend a lot of time online. The oeuvre of jrdmovimkr, an artist that makes fantastic stop-motion videos may have slipped your attention. His medium? Lego. Have a look at his work in this video – a shot-by-shot tribute to “White and Nerdy” by Weird Al Yankovic.  jrdmovimkr’s work has been viewed more than 3.4 million times.

Success on YouTube for witty self-created videos isn’t political or dependent on how rich, connected, or good-looking the author is – it is a complete meritocracy. If your work is clever and entertaining, it will gain acclaim and you will be famous, at least in the online world, and probably for more than 15 minutes.

You can ask the creators of the Potter Puppet Pals. Their most popular video has been viewed more than 70 million times. Seventy million people, by the way, would be enough to be the 15th most-populous country in the world.

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?

Earlier this week Catherine Rampell posted this map over at Economix. It shows the percentages of workers who drove to work alone by state and is based on U.S. Census data.

D.C. has the lowest rate – a fact which was not lost on D.C. blogging circles. NY did well too.  The worst performers were Alabama, Tennessee, and Ohio, where about eight in 10 workers drive alone -  more than double that of D.C.

With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we took a quick look at some factors that might be associated with this geographic pattern. It’s not an exhaustive list: We examined some key economic factors like income and economic output, human capital and the creative class, and psychological ones like happiness, stress, and personality. We removed D.C. from the analysis because it was such an extreme outlier. We did not develop or run any serious multivariate analysis – just simple correlations, or associations, between variables.

Still the findings point to some reasonably clear patterns.

Income and Economic Output: The richer the state, the less likely people were to drive alone. Driving alone was negatively correlated with state income levels (-.46) and output per capita (-.41).

Class and Human Capital: States with higher percentages of college graduates (-.47) and the creative class (-.43) were less likely to have people driving alone. Driving alone was much more likely in states with large working class concentrations (.62).

Professional and Creative Jobs: Driving alone was less likely in states with high concentrations of virtually every type of professional, knowledge-based and creative jobs. But it was least likely in states with large concentrations of artists, designers, and entertainers (-.63), architects and engineers (-.61), scientists (-.56 ), and lawyers (-.55).

Diversity – Immigrants and Gays: Driving alone was less likely in states with high concentrations of immigrants (-.51) and gays (-.41).

Happiness: Happiness research tells us that commuting is one of life’s least pleasurable activities.  Driving along was negatively associated with state levels of happiness and well-being (-.46) and positively associated with states with higher levels of stress (.29).

Personality: Psychologists identify five main personality types. Driving alone was more likely in states with high levels of three of them: extroverts (.29), conscientiousness (.36), and agreeableness (.44). Interestingly, there was no association between driving alone and the two other types – neurotic and openness to experience, which some might say makes it harder to explain New York.

This map is cool (via Catherine Rampell at Economix and based on Census data).

Yikes: More than 100 million American workers drive to work alone. Rampell, one of my fave economics bloggers, explains:

About three-quarters of American workers drove to their jobs alone in 2008. The least carpool-friendly states appeared to be Alabama, Tennessee and Ohio, where about 83 percent of workers drove alone. The District of Columbia and New York — whose residents are heavily dependent on public transportation — had the lowest rates of solo commuters, at 37.2 percent and 53.7 percent.

Anybody have the stats for Toronto?

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?

What does the music you listen to say about your personality, and what determines the kinds of music we like? Watch this video by path-breaking Cambridge University psychologist Jason Rentfrow and find out.