Data Analysis Project
This May I will be graduating from Longwood University with a Bachelors Degree in Liberal Studies and a minor in Earth Science. Since graduation is quickly approaching I decided that I would analyze data on housing costs as well as annual income based on level of education. I currently live in Henrico, Virginia and I plan to live here for a few more years once I graduate, because of this I felt it was appropriate to find the average cost of housing as well as annual income based on level of education in the state of Virginia.
My first graph shows the monthly housing costs based on a person’s annual income. For example, people who make less than $20,000 a year usually spend about 1,081 a month on housing. For the most part I felt the amount of money spent on housing a month would increase as annual income increased; however, I found that people who make $20,000 to $34,999 actually spend more a month on housing than those who make $35,000 to $49,999. I did not find it hard to believe; however, that people who make $75,000 or more annually spend the most on housing costs. While the data displayed for the most part that as annual income increases a persons housing expenses do as well, my second graph showed some different information. On my second graph I found that in Henrico, Virginia 3,354 homes cost between $1,000 to $1,499 each month. This was the largest amount of homes, while only 715 homes costs between $3,000 or more each month. This therefore proves that there must be more middle class citizens in this area than there are upper class citizens.
On my third and fourth graphs I wanted to also find out about earnings based on the level of education one obtains. For both male and female it is evident that as one’s level of education increases so do their annual earnings. While there was no information available on the median earnings of a woman with less than a high school diploma, it can be assumed that those medial earnings would be less than the earnings of a woman with at least a high school degree. It was also very clear that men had a medial earning in one year that was much higher than women. For example, the graph shows that a woman with a graduate or professional degree has a medial earning of $53,304 while a man with a graduate or professional degree has a medial earning of $78.152. This totals out to a relatively large difference of $25,848.
The purpose of analyzing these two sets of data was so I could gain a better understanding of annual salaries and housing costs in the area I will be living in once I graduate. I feel that obtaining housing information on the area I want to live in, as well as the average amount of money I will be likely to make based on my education helps prepare me for my future expenses.
I chose to design my charts as bar graphs because I felt that format did the best job of displaying the information in an organized manner. This format also made the information easy to read and interpret. I also felt it was important to include the labels, and the lay out of each of my charts made it so the labels were easy to read compared to other layouts of the other charters that were available.
References:
Household Income:
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF
# of Homes that Pay a specific cost: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR0x4UVkAzADjtZ_auIowsRnp9IhyX0HR0qBxTuIN4FfqNfGauwRxxyFcQFbfp9rI3yhYu2AKC–cE2/pubchart?oid=1601123908&format=interactive
Housing Costs Based on Income: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR0x4UVkAzADjtZ_auIowsRnp9IhyX0HR0qBxTuIN4FfqNfGauwRxxyFcQFbfp9rI3yhYu2AKC–cE2/pubchart?oid=911830488&format=interactive
Educational Attainment:
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF
Male: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSs5hwMb7pxk3aQeGOCm8yhK3e_UTXUYwG1T13XTTRfkavdzu4rYaVxe8wnUM544_CapnFG5fggmf75/pubchart?oid=240212101&format=interactive
Female: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSs5hwMb7pxk3aQeGOCm8yhK3e_UTXUYwG1T13XTTRfkavdzu4rYaVxe8wnUM544_CapnFG5fggmf75/pubchart?oid=1531968805&format=interactive