Growing up, my parents always told me that I needed to go to college to get a good job, so college has always been one of my goals. When I got to high school, I constantly heard fellow classmates say, "College isn't for me" or "I don't need a degree to make good money." This contrast of opinions made this research very interesting.
Here we analyze how education, specifically the percentage of people with at least a bachelor's degree, affects median incomes and poverty rates in different counties in California. The data shows there is a positive correlation between higher education levels and the median income in a county.
There were two counties that stood out. San Francisco supports our findings as it has both the highest education percentage and highest median income. The biggest circle on the scatterplot, Los Angeles County, is particularly interesting. I expected to see it as an outlier due to one of the main professions, entertainment, not requiring a college degree, but it falls into the same pattern as the rest of the counties. Both cities support our findings that higher education leads to higher incomes.