Young Asian Adult Migration Patterns in the United States

By Aria Yang

Data Introduction

In these datasets, researchers at Harvard University and the Census Bureau have linked federal tax filings, Census records, and other government data to track the migration patterns of young US residents. Specifically, for each person born in the US between 1984 and 1992, the researchers compared where they lived at age 16 to where they lived at age 26. The project’s public dataset counts the approximate number who moved to/from each pair of commuting zones — overall and disaggregated by race/ethnicity and parental income level.

The sample includes all children in the Census Numerical Identification Database (Numident) of Social Security Number holders who are born in the U.S. between 1984-92.

For this data visualization project, I want to filter the data of young Asian adults to see the hidden patterns and visualize them using appropriate data visualization tools.

Objectives of the Project

Among all the datasets, there is one that is disaggregated by race/ethnicity. In this dataset, I want to take a closer look at the pattern of how Asian migrate in the United States, and how the percentage of the cities they ch

• Explore the dataset using ggplot2 and other visualization libraries in R
• Create data visualizations using various R libraries
• Perform data analysis to explain the visualizations that have been created.

Dataset Description

4 datasets within the data package

• od_pooled.csv: Dataset contains count and fractions of people who move between each origin and destination (OD) commuting zone pair. These data are unique at the OD level. The variable pool takes the value “pooled”.
• od_race.csv – Dataset contains count and fractions of people who move between each OD commuting zone pair separately by race/ethnicity. These data are unique at the OD x race level. The variable pool takes the values “Asian”, “Black”, “Hispanic”, “White”, and “Other”. Note that “Other” includes not only other races but also people who are not linked to the Decennial Census or ACS.
• od_inc.csv – Dataset contains count and fractions of people who move between each origin and destination commuting zone pair separately by parental income quintile. These data are unique at the OD x income quintile level. The variable pool takes the values “Q1” (poorest parental income quintile), …, “Q5” (richest parental income quintile).
• od.csv – Dataset contains count and fractions of people who move between each origin and destination commuting zone pair separately by race/ethnicity and parental income quintile. These data are unique at the OD x race/ethnicity x parental income level. The variable pool takes the values of the pairwise combinations of race (“Asian”, “Black”, “Hispanic”, “White”, and “Other”) and parental income quintile (“Q1” - “Q5”). Note that the “Other” race/ethnicity category includes not only other races but also people who are not linked to the Decennial Census or ACS.

Variables

• o_state_name: The name of the state the origin CZ is in
• d_state_name: The name of the state the destination CZ is in.
• n: The number of individuals from origin o living in destination d.
• n_tot_o: Total number of individuals from origin o. Generated by summing n across d_cz cells for each o_cz.
• n_tot_d: Total number of individuals who live in destination d. Generated by summing n across o_cz for each d_cz.
• pr_d_o: The probability an individual lives in destination d given they grew up
  in origin o. Generated as n/n_tot_o.
• pr_o_d: The probability an individual is from origin o given they live in
  destination d. Generated as n/n_tot_d.

Questions：

• Which state does most Asian young adults in California move to?
• Which state does that most Asian young adults in California move away from?
• What are the popular cities/states where young adults stay in?

Data Visualization

Bar Charts

Sankey

Map

An interactive map to see the percentage of Asian young adults stay in the city they grew up in

Data visualization insights

• Top 10 States/destination with Young Asian Adult Migrants From California: New York, Texas, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, DC, Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, Hawaii
• Top 10 States/Origins Where Young Asian Adult Migrants to California: Hawaii, Texas, New York, Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, DC, Florida, Nevada, Massachusetts
• Popular cities among young Asian adults: where they stay in these cities where they grew up in:
  —Minneapolis 84.2%
  —Los Angeles 84.1%
  —San Francisco 81.9%
  —Seattle 81.7%
  —Las Vegas 75.4%