Clark County isn’t as bad a place to grow up as you thought

If you grew up in Southern Nevada, it’s better to have grown up in Nye County or up North then Clark County, according to The New York Times. Compared to the rest of the nation, Clark County is just above average for income mobility for children in poor families.

Income mobility is the ability to move from one income level to another.

In a study conducted for the Equality of Opportunity Project, researchers found that if you move from Las Vegas to nearby counties, you’ll be better off by age 26. Each year a poor child spends in Nye, it said, adds $80 to their annual income at age 26 — so if they grew up in Nye County, they’d be making $1,520 more per year than the national average. Children who grow up in Clark County end up making $660, or 3 percent, more per year than the national average.

Basically, the study is saying Clark County is a little better than average place to grow up, compared to the rest of the country. Clark County rates 1,186th out of the 2,478 counties surveyed, better than 48 percent of counties nationwide. Humboldt County, at the Northern edge of the state, rated the highest with 13 percent more income by age 26, better than 86 percent of U.S. counties.

In Clark County, poor girls have it better than poor boys.

The study analyzed five factors associated with income: lower levels of income inequality, less segregation by income or race, violent crime rates, better schools and amount of two-parent households.

It found that in Clark County, poor girls and average-income girls do better than others compared to Nye and Washoe counties.

Two of the worst counties in the nation, Oglala Lakota County and Todd County, are in South Dakota. Both were estimated to make 35 percent less than the national annual average by age 26.

Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, who led the study, are economists at Harvard University.

Contact Kristen DeSilva at 702-477-3895 or kdesilva@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @kristendesilva