Family Friendly Oakland County

Lab 2: Questions that Matter

Image by LittleFox-MM from DeviantArt

According to the recent census, 235,393 people between the ages of 20 to 34 reside in Oakland county. This the average age of adults think of starting a family. 

With this in mind, my partner and I took a look at the recent census to look at a few key factors like housing, diversity, and employment that could possibly affect one’s decision to start and raise a family in Oakland county. 

My partner and I took a look at the recent census and did some research on the possible pros and cons of living in Oakland county.

Based on our findings, we noticed Oakland County had a significant rise in employment rates over the past couple of years. We also noticed that the cost of living in Oakland County is about -2.5% less than the national average.

Graphics from Sperling's Best Places

A graphic depicting Oakland County's cost of living.

However, there is a lack of diversity in Oakland county. Specifically, 13.6% black, 5.6% Asian, 0.3% Native American, 3.5%hispanic, 2.2% two or more races. There are 38,120 vacant housing units available within Oakland county which begs the question if it’s really a great place to start a family?

That being said, crowdsourcing took place to see what people were thinking when it came to their future family. A face to face approach was used rather than a social media approach.

Yet, we believed the findings would’ve been more clear and beneficial to us if we used social media like Twitter or Facebook. 

Our findings showed people wanted a safe community with low crime rates and good schools. 

Although we didn’t entirely miss the mark, with the findings from crowdsourcing, we were able to reframe our ideas for a story people want and deserve.