In The New York Times Sunday, an economist asked and answered the question of why notable Americans seem to have grown up in certain types of counties across the country -- like Washtenaw County.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found Washtenaw had the fourth highest density of newborns destined for Wikipedia in a study he conducted on the "Geography of Fame."
He writes:
With a little coding, I had a data set of more than 150,000 Americans deemed by Wikipedia’s editors to be notable. The data set included county of birth, date of birth, occupation and gender. I merged it with county-level birth data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics. For every county in the United States, I calculated the odds of making it to Wikipedia if you were born there.
Despite some limitations, Stephens-Davidowitz says Wkipedia offers "a pretty remarkable data set of success and reveals some clear patterns." He limited his search to baby boomers, because they have had a lifetime to garner a listing in the famous online encyclopedia.
In all, roughly one in 2,058 American baby boomers have a listing in Wikipedia.
Stephens-Davidowitz discovered many of the top counties contain a sizable college town. Washtenaw has two: Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. And in Washtenaw, the proportion of people who became notable is one in 864.
Why is this? Some of it is probably the gene pool: Sons and daughters of professors and graduate students tend to be smart. And, indeed, having more college graduates in an area is a strong predictor of the success of the people born there.
But there is most likely something more going on: early exposure to innovation. One of the fields where college towns are most successful in producing top dogs is music. A kid in a college town will be exposed to unique concerts, unusual radio stations and even record stores. College towns also incubate more than their expected share of notable businesspeople.
The second attribute most likely to get a person a Wiki entry is living in a county that includes a big city. Wayne County did not make the top 13 counties listed, but being born in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and New York City have birthed many successful people. Suburban counties, unless they contained major college towns, performed far worse than their city counterparts, though another variable that was a strong predictor of Wikipedia entrants per birth: the proportion of immigrants in a county.
Suffolk County, Mass., finished first in the study. It is home to Boston, which Stephens-Davidowitz says combines all the main ingredients for success.
It is an urban area with many extremely accomplished people offering kids lessons on how to make it. And it draws plenty of immigrants, whose children are driven to apply these lessons.
The county with the lowest density of newborns destined for success, Wiki-style?
Allegan County, in western Michigan. It has no native-born baby boomers who ended up in Wikipedia. In 1950, as the baby boom was picking up steam, it was only 24 percent urban and had few of the other markers of the study's predictors of success.
