variogroep

voor beleid en participatie

If you happen to be a number cruncher, or statistician, the Netherlands counts with an institution apparently designed to make you happy, the CBS (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) A huge amount of information on NL is made public in their site.

Now, consider the mission of the Variogroep. We are concerned with the value of diversity. Right away, a question appears: is there any relation in between the percentage of allochtonen  in a city, or region, and its economical output? Are cities with a big allochtoon population richer? Take a look at the graphic...

Rijk and Divers:

Linking migrant population and economical output

en voegt kleur toe...

De Variogroep herkent de grijstonen in uw organisatie

Here we plot BBP per capita(Bruto Binnenlandse Product) against absolute number of allochtonen, in a given region in NL. The graphic tells us that the bigger the bbp of a regio, the bigger the number of allochtonen living in it. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the outspoken regions are in the Randstad. Bigger cities are richer and have a more diverse population. But what is in the cloud at the left?

In this second graph we have taken out the big cities that seem to drive the diagonal pattern of the previous graph. But the pattern is strong enough to remain. The richer a region, the more allochtonen it has. Or, the more allochtonen there are, the richer the region. Which one of the options is correct? 

These options do not exclude each other. We can believe that allochtonen decide to live in places in which there is more richness. Or we could think that allochtonen are a crucial part of the production of richess in a Dutch region. Consider, nevertheless, that the allochtonen plotted here are not only newcomers, but belonging to the second generation. They, beyond doubt, play an important role in the economic process of a region.

To further analyze this issue, other refined numbers can (and will) be used. The Variogroep has decided to explore these correlations further, on the light of these interesting and preliminary, results.

Interested? Do read our full proposal here, or contact us for further discussion.