Conventional wisdom suggests that cities are pretty dangerous. There's crime, the chance of getting killed, and there are lots of cars, some of which have a tendency to fly off the road and do bad things on occasion. And in some ways, this is true. Here is a chart from Bloomberg showing homicides per 100k people:

What this tells us is that if you live in a large metropolitan area in the US, you have a higher chance of being killed by someone else than if you were to live in a rural non-metro area. However, based on this data, one of the safest places you could actually live is in New York City. This might surprise some of you.

On top of this, if you layer on the chance of dying from a transportation-related accident, the absolute safest place you could live in America is in fact New York City:

This is because New Yorkers are only about a third as likely to die from a transportation-related accident as compared to the average American. Oddly enough, when you have a city where the vast majority of residents don't drive their own car around, people seem to die a lot less from traffic accidents.

But how does this compare to other cities around the world? Let's take Paris, which is another big and important global city. According to Bloomberg, the risk that Parisians face from possible killing and transportation accidents is about one-third that of New Yorkers. So it's even safer over there.

Turns out that some big cities aren't as dangerous as people might think. For the full Bloomberg article, click here.

There’s an argument going around these days that rural America is the new inner city. That is, rural America has replaced inner cities as the geographies facing the greatest socioeconomic challenges. 

In fact, it’s time for the stigma associated with the term “inner city” to disappear – if it hasn’t already. Blight no longer seems to be the concern. Instead, the concern is that our inner cities are becoming exclusive enclaves for the rich.

The United States Department of Agriculture recently published data on educational attainment within rural areas. And since education is one of the biggest drivers of economic prosperity, it’s valuable to look at this data. 

The first thing to note is that while educational attainment within rural areas is increasing, it still lags urban areas:

The second thing to note is that even with the same level of higher education, the labor market will generally pay you more if you live in an urban area:

However, the spread between rural-urban increases as you move up the education ladder. With less than a school diploma, there isn’t much difference. But with a graduate or professional degree, there’s about a ~35% increase in earnings, on average, according to the above chart.

So it should come as no surprise that many smart and educated people are choosing to live in urban areas. They should make more money.

All charts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.