Long Island millennials, Gen Z survey: Your questions answered

How does the percentage of young people who have never lived anywhere but Long Island compare to other regions?

This seems to be poking at a much larger question of, "how unique are these trends or issues LI young adults are facing?"

We checked, and it does not look like there are other 1-to-1 datasets that are comparable.

This isn't to say that other people, researchers and organizations are not studying migration patterns, but often the scope and scale differ as they attempt to find answers to different questions than we are.

The Census, for example, tracks county to county migration patterns. Using the Census Flows Mapper, you can look at Nassau and Suffolk County and see the estimated inbound and outbound migrations within the span of a few years.

However, this is not narrowed to a specific age group, and it does not answer if the people who are moving outbound are Long Island-born or otherwise.

Back in 2011, the Census also released a brief called the "Lifetime Mobility in the United States."There is updated data on this available here, as recent as 2017, but it is state-level data and does not include an age filter either.

On Vox.com, "Those who stay, and those who leave" touches on this topic. It uses a diverse source of data to illustrate the overall trend that could be found in migration and, well, people who say and who leave - a fascinating article, but with a focus different than what our study was aimed at.

If any of our readers might know of a similar dataset, or of other organizations interested in exploring this further with us, please send our data journalist, Kai Teoh, an email.

It can be very cost prohibitive to do research and studies on smaller levels. Different regions have different challenges that local organizations tend to focus on, and larger studies tend to drill down only to the state level, as granularity is expensive when scaled. NextLI is unique in its position and role, as there are few metro areas with the combined philanthropic vision and structural institutions to support such an endeavor.

What was the average age of the 30% of 18-34 year olds that own a home?

The short answer to this is 28 years old.

The mode in our survey, however, is people ages 30 to 34 years old. More than half of young adults who own a home on Long Island are people in that age group, and if you look at the table below the trend seems to make sense - people are more likely to own homes as they grow older.

Home ownership and marital status – do single people leave?

This is our interpretation of this question we received:

Did you ask married versus single? I would not have been able to move out of my parents house without a spouse to split the bills. Do single people leave?

We did ask people about their marital status, and we're sharing the data/chart below.

It's interesting that home ownership rates of people that are single (20 percent) is higher than those that are widowed, divorced or in a domestic partnership.

And the percentage of single people that are renting is also lower than all other groups, except for those that are married.

Is there a correlation between marijuana legalization and trust in police?

Surprisingly, there does not seem to be much difference in trust levels between people who support legalized marijuana and those who do not.

Out of curiousity, we decided to also see if there are any correlations between political ideology and marijuana support.

Support for legalized marijuana spans all political ideologies, but those who lean conservative are more likely not be supportive of it.

What percentage of people that moved into the city will move back to Long Island to raise a family?

During our event, Amy Emmatty from YouGov mentioned the overarching story about how New York City residents had a more positive view of Long Island than current Long Islanders.

We did not ask if New York City residents would move back to Long Island to raise their family, but they feel as positive about Long Island for raising families as Long Islanders do. This does not necessarily mean they would move here, but the positive sentiment is there.

We did ask all if they plan to retire on Long Island. While retirement is not the same as moving back to Long Island to raise kids, the sentiment is stronger for New York City residents to retire on Long Island than for Long Islanders.

What do you calculate is the salary needed to live on LI?

Our survey did not ask this, and we have not devised a formula or number that we can confidently say is the magic number that Long Islanders need to hit in order to live on Long Island.

It's a great question, but it's not a question that we can answer ourselves.

However, we are able to seek out experts that spend their years studying this issue.

In fact, the Census Bureau recently released a report called "Multidimensional Deprivation in the United States: 2017" that compares the difference between the official poverty measures and a new index that supplements it.

In the past, we have also highlighted the ALICE report and its way of measuring how many residents struggle in a region.

MIT has a Living Wage Calculator as well and you can read about it here.

Numerous other financial institutions or sites will also offer their version of a living wage calculator or estimate.

But none of these are perfect estimates, and they all make assumptions about legitimate "needs" verses frivolous "wants."

This isn't to say that a brilliant mind out there would not be able to design the perfect formula - and we will continue to pay attention to any such endeavors. But until then, why don't you share with us what you think is a fair wage for Long Island?

Or if you know of someone doing meaningful studies on this and would like us to pay attention to them - let us know or send an email to our data journalist Kai Teoh.

Would there be a way to identify a ratio for debt to wage here on Long Island vs. the nation?

Yes! Debt is something that a lot of groups are interested in, including the government, and there's data available on this topic.

This is something we plan on looking into more, but in the meantime, we can share other organizations that have already done this research.

As usual, we'd like to remind and encourage our readers to read up on their methodology and about sections for such studies - datasets often have limitations and understanding what those are is important as we move forward with our discussions.

Urban Institute's Debt in America map

Urban Institute has an interactive map that shows county level debt for medical, auto loan and student debt. They seem to have kept it fairly updated, with the dates noted, and they have a decent amount of demographic data to help explain the context surrounding the debt.

You can take a look at the map here.

The Federal Reserve Debt-to-Income ratio map

This map shows median household debt and has historic data going back to 1999 to 2017.

Having historic data and being able to scrub through it is great for looking at trends. They have a relatively technical note that explains their methodology, and we highly recommend reading it.

They also have maps created for state and metropolitan area-level data, and you can take a look at them here.

Federal Reserve raw data

This is a trickier to navigate, but using this filter, you should be able to pick and select debt levels for different counties to compare. We've narrowed the filter to New York to begin with as that interface is not very user-friendly.

Let us know if you find anything interesting there, or have more questions about it.

Was it surveyed data that indicates a correlation between annual wage growth rate and increasing rate of housing prices?

No, that is data from the Census Bureau. We used the American Community Survey 1-year data, and looked at two tables - Median Gross Rent (B25064) and Median Household Income (B19013).

Here are the direct links to the Median Household Income table, and the Median Gross Rent table. For additional analysis, you might want to narrow down the geographies.

Or, if you have additional questions about it, let us know in the comments.

Any notable trends along gender lines? Do ‘men leave’?

We did ask about gender. Generally speaking, as we were analyzing the data we did not find notable "story threads" or arcs along gender lines.

The likelihood to leave, for example, is about the same between men and women.

But if you have additional questions about gender differences please let us know in the comments, and we can look into it. There could be topics that we might have missed.

Are there thoughts about difference between actual diversity in communities versus perception of diversity?

The full question that was submitted is below:

65% say they live in a diverse neighborhood yet our region is very segregated. Are there thoughts about difference between actual diversity in communities versus perception of diversity in how diverse those communities actually are?

We did not ask or record the neighborhoods of the respondents - the survey data was not that granular. And this question also makes a fantastic point - how do you define "diversity" in a community?

Is 10 percent population of a minority considered diversity? Or does it have to be a 40-60 percentage mix?

We did not define that in our survey as we wanted to survey attitudes, and most people have their own standards and sense of diversity. It could also be that some people do not live in "diverse" communities, but they engage with the small group of diverse population that does live in that community, and so they might feel that they live in a diverse neighborhood.

That's a long, roundabout manner of saying - we do have similar questions and thoughts about it as the individual that sent us this question, but we do not have the research data (yet, hopefully) to quantify it better.

Millennials are defined as 25-38 according to the Pew Research Center – did you use 25-34?

To be on the safe side, we are actually answering this question twice. We received this question phrased differently a few times by various people.

The short answer is yes - we used the age 25-34, but also no, we did not use millennials.

For additional explanation and context, you can read our answer in the Methodology section here.

Any data on percentage that are entrepreneurs?

Fourteen percent of our respondents said they were business entrepreneurs, and seven percent considered themselves philanthropic entrepreneurs.

However, this was a question where our respondents could select multiple answers or categories that they felt applied to them.

This means that some people could have checked "yes" to both business and philanthropic entrepreneurs.