As the richest person in New Jersey, hedge fund magnate David Tepper, moves to Florida, there has been insatiable curiosity about the lives and the disproportionate taxes often paid (relative to other residents not relative to what's equitable) by each state's richest person (here, here, here). There is no shortage of analysis about wealth inequality, particularly during an election year, and this blog has studied in great depth the probability theory aspects of this as well (here, here) and the research was also one of the most famous on this blog and featured by Tyler Cowen (also a New York Times columnist). We have a map highlighting who was the richest person is in each of the 50 states, and that article yesterday was the 2nd most popular on Zero Hedge generating >90k reads on that site alone! It seemed like an entertaining topic on which to go deeper, for those curious, and show which colleges these 50 ultra-affluent graduated from. One might assume that my alma mater, Harvard U., would be a primary choice. Or perhaps some might assume there is a bias towards a small number of the largest state schools, such as Ohio State U., The U. of Texas, or the U. of California. But none of these hypotheses pan out! This is a quirky result of exceptionally rare coincidences at the freakish extremes of a distribution (looking at just <0.00005% of the adult population or a >6-sigma event). So for those inquisitive, we satisfy with "perhaps" surprising academic characteristics of these 50 individuals.
To start, 13 of the 50 (26%) never wasted a second completing a college degree! Most of these never attended, though just a couple did take various classes across multiple colleges before quickly dropping out. The remaining 37 of the 50 (i.e., the college graduates) attended colleges all located in just 25 of the 50 states plus District of Columbia (so in just less than ½ of the 50 states as shown in both graphics above and below). None attended an international college. The Northeast we see was somewhat popular, particularly Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Together these 2 states was home to the graduating college of >¼ of these 37 ultra-rich. Think about that: we have an odd situation in the U.S. where of the states' richest, >½ either didn't graduate from college or graduated from a college in either northern colonial state of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.
Also, what specific colleges did these 37 über-wealthy graduate from? We see that they are much more spread out among the thousands of possible institutions, with only MIT and the University of Pennsylvania being the alma mater for >1 each of these 37 people. These two schools graduated only 2 each, of these 37. It might be comical to some to note that the Koch Brothers are the 2 of the 37 college graduates, who graduated from MIT. So without their mother, MIT wouldn't even be on this list!
So as Mr. Tepper (The U. of Pittsburgh) is moving to Florida, a respectable number (43%) of these mega-moneyed college graduates currently still reside in the same state as where they studied. And nearly the same fraction also attended a public college. Their loyalty to a location is described later. Only ~13% of the 50 attended one of a handful of nation's most elite colleges, or among the college graduates it is still just ~18%. And good for him or her! We can actually estimate a geospatial correlation of the relationship between where in the U.S. a state's richest resides and where he or she graduated from. We put forth this non-parametric (here, here) estimate for concordance (see here for a more common formula versus what we have proposed below):
[(# of ultra-prosperous in the same state as their college) - (1/3 of remaining graduates)]/(number of graduates)
= (16 - 1/3*21)/37
= 9/37
= 24%
In other words there is a slight positive relationship between where each of these 50 super-rich might graduate from college, and where they reside at the peak of their financial lives. Some will choose to move across the country for a number of reasons, while many others simply move elsewhere in the U.S., not too far from where they went to college. In some hard-asset industries it is ostensibly problematic to redomicle (versus in the financial services sector highlighted in green on the map repeated below). This is of course a great correlation in the outlier, since they clearly didn't all (particularly the financiers) settle in the great states of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania!
To start, 13 of the 50 (26%) never wasted a second completing a college degree! Most of these never attended, though just a couple did take various classes across multiple colleges before quickly dropping out. The remaining 37 of the 50 (i.e., the college graduates) attended colleges all located in just 25 of the 50 states plus District of Columbia (so in just less than ½ of the 50 states as shown in both graphics above and below). None attended an international college. The Northeast we see was somewhat popular, particularly Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Together these 2 states was home to the graduating college of >¼ of these 37 ultra-rich. Think about that: we have an odd situation in the U.S. where of the states' richest, >½ either didn't graduate from college or graduated from a college in either northern colonial state of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.
Also, what specific colleges did these 37 über-wealthy graduate from? We see that they are much more spread out among the thousands of possible institutions, with only MIT and the University of Pennsylvania being the alma mater for >1 each of these 37 people. These two schools graduated only 2 each, of these 37. It might be comical to some to note that the Koch Brothers are the 2 of the 37 college graduates, who graduated from MIT. So without their mother, MIT wouldn't even be on this list!
So as Mr. Tepper (The U. of Pittsburgh) is moving to Florida, a respectable number (43%) of these mega-moneyed college graduates currently still reside in the same state as where they studied. And nearly the same fraction also attended a public college. Their loyalty to a location is described later. Only ~13% of the 50 attended one of a handful of nation's most elite colleges, or among the college graduates it is still just ~18%. And good for him or her! We can actually estimate a geospatial correlation of the relationship between where in the U.S. a state's richest resides and where he or she graduated from. We put forth this non-parametric (here, here) estimate for concordance (see here for a more common formula versus what we have proposed below):
[(# of ultra-prosperous in the same state as their college) - (1/3 of remaining graduates)]/(number of graduates)
= (16 - 1/3*21)/37
= 9/37
= 24%
In other words there is a slight positive relationship between where each of these 50 super-rich might graduate from college, and where they reside at the peak of their financial lives. Some will choose to move across the country for a number of reasons, while many others simply move elsewhere in the U.S., not too far from where they went to college. In some hard-asset industries it is ostensibly problematic to redomicle (versus in the financial services sector highlighted in green on the map repeated below). This is of course a great correlation in the outlier, since they clearly didn't all (particularly the financiers) settle in the great states of Massachusetts or Pennsylvania!
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