Legend

This bivariate choropleth map, explores the relationship between high school attainment by percentage, and house prices by Zillow home value index (Zhvi). The education data is from 2017 and the Zhvi from April 2019. For more information on Zhvi go to Zillow research.

To get a better idea of the home prices and school attainment, I also included a scatter plot. Since home prices and High School attainment percentages were skewed, they were divided into quartiles. For a clear depiction of the quartiles, check the scatter plot. The size of the circles represent, the population of each county. If you hover over the scatter plot you can also get more information on each county and precise values.

Shanon, South Dakota and Wade Hampton, Alaska, were counties with no School attainment data. Furthermore, 412 counties had no Zhvi index. The counties with missing data were depicted with white. Their Zhvi, and high school attainment percentage is displayed as NA.

The outcome for California with high property values and low school attainment was not surprising. Nor the fact that the Midwest is where you are more likely to find the American Dream! Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that Kansas has overall the cheapest housing and highest educational attainment.

For more information on Population and Educational Attainment check this map. For a timeline of property values change, check this animated map of Real Estate prices in the US. For a ranking of the best Universities and colleges in the US go to this list.

Resources

The Secondary School completion data and population data for this map were obtained from the US Census Bureau. The House Value Index was obtained from Zillow. The data used was the Summary of the month. The Shapefiles were obtained from Natural Earth. The code was obtained and altered from Let's make a bubble map. The guide to make a bivariate map was from Bivariate Choropleth Map. The colors were obtained from hclwizard.

The design was inspired by Bo McCready's Education and Unemployment map.