Although urban Texans' median age is increasing, the cities of Texas are heterogeneous with respect to age composition. Middle-aged adults tend to live in the suburbs, while those aged 55 and older reside mostly in center cities. The proportion of the state's population with at least a high school education and with a baccalaureate degree or higher increased from 1980 to 1990. Levels of educational attainment, however, vary widely among Texas cities. There is uniformity of attainment, or lack thereof, within several cities, however.
Some cities rank high in both categories, others rank low.
Generally, suburbs' high school graduation rates exceeded those of center cities. Housing and Land Use Texas cities do not lend themselves to typical city-suburb comparisons found in urban areas in the North, having more in common with Southwestern cities. Texas MSAs differ from those in the Northeast primarily in their form - expansive, sprawling, and largely traversable only by automobile, not unlike a grouping of edge cities within a county. Highways have been instrumental in shaping Texas MSAs, from encouraging sprawl and the formation of edge cities to providing a means of annexation. The result has been a diversification of Texas suburbs including thriving business communities and an increasing number of new homeowners.