It’s often said that all roads lead to Salisbury. Wherever you go, you can find a Salisbury connection. Lately, though, all rankings have led to Salisbury-Rowan — and not in a good way.

The latest comes from a study conducted by two Harvard economists which found Rowan is not a place where poor families can expect their children to experience upward mobility.

The Equality of Opportunity Project,  reported by the New York Times, was based on the earnings records of millions of families that moved with children between 1996 and 2012. The data point to this conclusion, according to the Times: “Poor children who grow up in some cities and towns have sharply better odds of escaping poverty than similar poor children elsewhere.”

Well, sure. But beneath the obvious conclusion lie troubling data. An interactive map on the Times’ site allows readers to identify their county, and the news for Rowan is not good.

“Rowan County is extremely bad for income mobility for children in poor families,” the Times site says. “It’s among the worst counties in the U.S. in helping poor children up the income ladder. It ranks 88th out of 2,478 counties, better than only about 4 percent of counties.”

Mecklenburg County ranked as one of the worst metropolitan areas for upward mobility, second only to Baltimore. Stanly, Davie and Randolph counties all had positive numbers.

The study is considered powerful proof that good neighborhoods nurture success. Their schools, community, neighbors, amenities, economic opportunities and social norms positively shape children’s lives, the Times reports.

It boils down to this: Place matters. To build a better future for Rowan County, leaders and citizens must work together to make this a better place for children to grow up. If we’re reading this study correctly, lately children’s future prospects were more likely to go down than up in Rowan. That cannot continue.

Find more information about the study at http://ow.ly/MSrZf and ow.ly/MSs9Z  and http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/