Who's Winning the Competition for America's College Grads?

In a trend that has only surfaced in the last few decades, but was accelerated by the recession, the gap between cities with high numbers of college grads and those at the other end of the spectrum, "shows signs of widening as college graduates gravitate to places with many other college graduates and the atmosphere that creates."

According to Tavernise, recent analysis by the Brookings Institution shows that, "The winners are metro areas like Raleigh, N.C., San Francisco and Stamford, Conn., where more than 40 percent of the adult residents have college degrees...Metro areas like Bakersfield, Calif., Lakeland, Fla., and Youngstown, Ohio, where less than a fifth of the adult residents have college degrees, are being left behind."

Why is this disparity important? "In a pattern that is part education, part family background, college graduates tend to have longer life expectancies, higher household incomes, lower divorce rates and fewer single-parent families than those with less education, and cities where they cluster tend to exhibit those patterns more strongly."