Hacker News Reader

The charts in the article are pretty interesting. In some provinces the income mobility of the bottom fifth is better than some of the middle three groups (data which is hidden in the article but can be inferred). The article mentions immigration as a potential cause of this, but it would be interesting to figure out if there are other reasons why there isn't a general trend line here.

View on HN

Are you referring to the fact that if the region is dark green (more than 20%) for moving into the top quintile from the bottom, it necessitates that another quintile has a rate less than 20%?

The income quintile boundaries are set nationally, but the movements are divided locally, there is no such requirement for balancing in a single area. In theory, a single location could have 100% of people moving into the national top quintile.

edit: I'm referring to the chart called Rags-to-riches income mobility

They also pick different comparison groups for the projected income -- likely to give the appearance of linearity where there is some evidence the predictions aren't actually linear over the quintiles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com