The statistics presented to respondents are household income per capita, the percentage of persons aged 25 years and above with at least a bachelor's degree, the 90/10 income inequality ratio, and the percent of children from the 90th income percentile who attended a four-year college program by age 21 years, minus the percent of children from the 10th percentile. To generate the values to be presented, we take values for each variable at the national level and set those as midpoints. For variation, we calculate the CZ-level SDs using comparable statistics from the Chetty et al. (2014) data. We then add/subtract one-half and one times the respective SDs to the average values. Therefore, lowest/highest values are the average minus/plus one times the SD, for a total of five values per variable. For purposes of easier interpretation, we modify the values slightly by rounding. Table 1 shows the final set of variables values that are assigned to respondents.10

Table 1.
Discrete Choice Experiment, Randomization Values Actual
VariableMean − 1 SDMean − 0.5 SDMeanMean + 0.5 SDMean + 1 SD
Income per capita $36,000$39,000 $42,000$45,000 $48,000 Inequality income 8.8 9.6 10.5 11.3 Percent college educated 14% 21% 28% 35% 42% Inequality higher education 46% 50% 54% 59% 63% VariableMean − 1 SDMean − 0.5 SDMeanMean + 0.5 SDMean + 1 SD Income per capita$36,000 $39,000$42,000 $45,000$48,000
Inequality income 8.8 9.6 10.5 11.3
Percent college educated 14% 21% 28% 35% 42%
Inequality higher education 46% 50% 54% 59% 63%

Notes: Descriptive statistics for the four societal variables randomly assigned to respondents. All values taken from Chetty et al. (2014) from the Equality-of-Opportunity.org project. Mean corresponds to national mean and variation is based on the estimated between-commuting zone standard deviation. SD = standard deviation.

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