Opportunity Gaps in the DC Region

| Posted: February 15th, 2012

At the time of Martin Luther King's death, most American urban areas, in the North as well as the South, were highly segregated, and African Americans were denied equal access to good schools, well-paying jobs, and homeownership—all essential pathways to economic success. Today, more than four decades later, the disparities have narrowed considerably, and growing numbers of black Americans have succeeded in climbing the ladder of social and economic opportunity. But African Americans (on average) still don’t enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites.

To complicate matters further, immigration has made our population dramatically more diverse. So the picture of racial inequity in urban America is no longer so stark—or so clearly evident. Some metros perform a lot better than others for their minority residents. And some serve members of one minority well but not others.

To explore this complex picture, the Urban Institute developed a "report card" that ranks the nation's 100 biggest metro areas on five factors: residential segregation, neighborhood affluence (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white), public school quality (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white student), employment (among working-age adults), and homeownership.

How does the DC region score? Not as well as you might think. For African Americans, it ranks 50th of 100 big metro areas (a C if we're grading on a curve). Residential segregation is high by national standards (although it has declined substantially over recent decades). The average African American in the DC region lives in a much lower-income neighborhood than the average white, and the average African American child attends a lower-performing school than the average white child. The DC region appears to be performing better for African Americans with respect to employment and homeownership opportunities. Although blacks are less likely than whites to have jobs or to own their own homes, these gaps are narrow by national standards.

Opportunity Gaps Among Whites, Blacks, and Latinos in the Washington, DC Metro Area

Source: Urban Institute analysis of Brown University US 2010 and 2010 Census data

Now let’s look at Latino-white equity. The DC region scores a C again—45th among the nation's 100 biggest metros. Latinos are less segregated from non-Hispanic whites than are blacks, but the DC region's Latino-white segregation levels are high by national standards, and they've been climbing for the last several decades at the same time the Latino population has been growing. The average Latino lives in a neighborhood that's higher income than the average African American's, but still lower than the average white's. And the average Latino child attends a school that performs better than the average African American child's but, again, not on par with the average white child's. Employment is high among working-age Latinos, and—as for African Americans—homeownership rates are high by national standards.

So when it comes to opportunities for its growing minority population, our region's performance is respectable but by no means laudable. Closing the remaining opportunity gaps is no simple matter. Historically, public policies played a central role in establishing and enforcing patterns of racial segregation and inequality, alongside discriminatory practices by private-sector institutions and individuals. But no single causal process explains the persistence of these opportunity gaps in the Washington region—or other American metros—and no single policy initiative can eradicate them.  Instead, the evidence argues for combination strategies to address interconnected barriers like unaffordable mortgages, neighborhood distress, failing schools, and weak job markets.

I hope policymakers and civic leaders in metropolitan Washington will use our report card to start a constructive metro-wide conversation, asking “What can we do to narrow the opportunity gaps in our region?”

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Mapping Where Poor Washingtonians Live

| Posted: February 7th, 2012

Although the Washington, DC, region has weathered the Great Recession and its aftermath relatively well, at latest count, the region’s poverty rate stood at 8 percent. A new MetroTrends spotlight focuses on where the region’s poor people live.

Like most big cities, DC has a higher rate of poverty than its surrounding suburbs. But the total number of poor people living in the region’s suburbs (370,000) far exceeds the number living in the District (102,000).

Poor blacks are much more likely to live in DC than either poor whites or poor Latinos. As the right-hand panel of the map below shows, poor blacks are clustered in DC neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, while poor whites and Latinos are widely scattered across the region as a whole.

Source: Urban Institute analysis of 1990 and 2000 Decennial Census data and 2005-2009 5-Year American Community Survey data

Our map also illustrates changes in where poor Washingtonians lived over the past two decades. Slide the bar to compare the region in 1990, 2000, and the 2005-09 period (the most current data).

Tackling poverty in the Washington region poses multiple challenges for area policymakers. It’s not just a city problem; suburban communities need to deliver support and opportunity too. It’s not just a neighborhood revitalization problem, although overcoming the legacy of segregation in the District’s poorest neighborhoods is critical. It’s not just an English-speaking problem; communities across the region have to reach out to a growing population of immigrants, many of whom speak little English. And it’s not somebody else’s problem; explore our map and you’ll likely see that poor people are among your neighbors. Helping these families overcome poverty is not just a matter of providing aid so they can get by day to day, it’s also about providing opportunities for them to escape poverty in the long run through education, work, and savings.

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How Wide Are the Racial Opportunity Gaps in Your Metro?

| Posted: February 2nd, 2012

In December, MetroTrends graded America’s 100 biggest metros on measures of economic security. Today we offer a new report card, with grades reflecting the opportunity gaps facing African Americans and Latinos.

We’re all well aware of the national story. Despite the huge achievements of the civil rights era, neither African Americans nor Latinos (on average) enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites. But the picture isn’t the same in every metro area. So our report card scores metros on five factors: residential segregation, neighborhood affluence (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white), public school quality (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white student), employment (among working-age adults), and homeownership.

Let’s start by looking at the grades for black-white equity.

Surprised? The top scorers are mostly small- to medium-sized metros in the south and west (Charleston, SC, and Riverside, CA, for example), while the worst performers are big metros in the midwest and northeast (including New York, Boston, and Chicago).

When I first saw these results, I thought perhaps that so few African Americans live in the high-scoring metros that their high performance is irrelevant. For some top scorers (like Albuquerque and San Jose), that’s definitely the case. But lots of other metros scoring As and Bs on this report card have substantial African American populations.

So my second thought was this: maybe outcomes for African Americans are better in big, prosperous metros like New York, Boston, and Chicago, even though the gaps between African Americans and whites are wider there. Not true. Average outcomes for African Americans (on all five factors) are best among metros scoring As and worst among those scoring Fs. African Americans in Charleston, SC, and Oklahoma City are more likely to be employed, own their homes, live in prosperous neighborhoods, and attend high-performing schools than their counterparts in Milwaukee or Boston.

I should note that we’re grading on a curve here. Even in metros scoring As, the average African American lives in a lower-income neighborhood, attends lower-performing schools, is less likely to find a job, and is less likely to own a home than the average white. But these gaps are two to three times wider in the metros scoring Fs.

Now let’s look at the grades for Latino-white equity.

Equity for Latinos (click image below for interactive map)

Source: Urban Institute analysis of Brown University US2010 and 2010 Census data

The overall picture looks pretty similar. And indeed, many metros either score well for both African Americans and Latinos (like Palm Bay, FL, Colorado Springs, and Raleigh, NC) or score poorly for both (like New York, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia). But a few metros—like San Jose, CA—stand out for scoring high on equity for their (small) African American population but low for their (much larger) Latino population. And the reverse is true in metros like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, which perform poorly for African Americans but quite well for Latinos.

You can find any metro’s score (and all the underlying factors) on our map by mousing over and clicking on it. But you can also modify our scoring system. Maybe employment matters more to you than homeownership, or you don’t care about residential segregation at all. Change the relative importance of the five factors in the box, and MetroTrends will recompute the scores and display your new rankings.

Closing these opportunity gaps is no simple matter. And the solutions—such as targeted school investments, fair housing enforcement, and job training—have to be crafted locally to tackle fundamental sources of inequality. So policymakers and civic leaders in metros across the country should be using our report card to challenge themselves, asking “How does our region perform?” and “What can we do to narrow the opportunity gaps in our region?”

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Celebrating MLK Day—How Wide Are The Opportunity Gaps Today?

| Posted: January 16th, 2012

 

“Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Martin Luther King Jr. fought not only for civil rights, but also for economic justice. At the time of his death, most American urban areas, in the North as well as in the South, were highly segregated and African Americans were denied equal access to good schools, well-paying jobs, and homeownership—all essential pathways to economic success.

Today, more than four decades later, African Americans (on average) still don’t enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites. But the disparities have narrowed considerably and growing numbers of black Americans have succeeded in climbing the ladder of social and economic opportunity.

To complicate matters further, immigration has made our population dramatically more diverse. So the picture of racial inequity in urban America is no longer so stark—or so clearly evident. Some metros perform a lot better than others for their minority residents. And some serve members of one minority well, but not others.

Take a look at Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example. The region’s average white elementary-school student attends a school that scores in the 70th percentile on state assessment tests. The average black student’s school scores 13 points lower and the average Latino’s 25 points lower. But those school performance gaps are even wider in most other metros. In the New York region, the average black student’s school scores a shocking 42 points below the average white’s, and the average Latino student’s school 41 points below. And in Pittsburgh, the average Latino student’s school scores 2 points higher than the average white’s school, while the average black’s school scores 38 points lower.

State Test Scores For Elementary Schools Attended By The Average White, Black And Latino Student

Source: Percentile ranking on state standardized tests (in 2004) of the school that the average child of a racial/ethnic group attends

The racial homeownership gap varies across metros as well. In all five metros shown here, whites are far more likely than either blacks or Latinos to own their homes. But the black-white gap is narrowest in the DC region (24 points) and widest in the New York region (35 points). Albuquerque performs relatively well on this score for Latinos (only an 8 point gap), while New York performs even more poorly for Latinos than for blacks.

Share Of White, Black, And Latino Households Who Are Homeowners

Source: Share of households owner-occupants, ACS (2010)

How about job opportunities? In the Washington, DC, region 67 percent of working-age whites are employed, compared with only 62 percent of blacks, but 74 percent of Latinos. The black-white employment gap is narrower in both Albuquerque and Oklahoma City. And again, Pittsburgh seems to perform well for Latinos but poorly for African Americans.

Share Of Working-Age Whites, Blacks, And Latinos Employed

Source: Share of adult population employed, ACS (2010)

Closing these opportunity gaps is no simple matter. And the solutions—such as targeted school investments, fair housing enforcement, and job training—have to be crafted locally. So today, as we celebrate King’s vision of racial opportunity and equity, policymakers and civic leaders in metros across the country should be asking: “How does our region perform?” and “What can we do to narrow the opportunity gap?”

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Best and Worst Metros…A Report Card on Economic Security

| Posted: December 14th, 2011

In my last blog, I asked whether America’s most prosperous metros – like New York, DC, and San Francisco – are good places for the 99% to live and concluded that workers with limited education and skills would find these trend-setting cities hard to afford.  I also pointed to the Oklahoma City region, with its low unemployment and low housing costs, as a pretty good place to live and that made me want to learn a little more about Greater Oklahoma City.

Metropolitan Oklahoma City’s diverse economy – including government, universities, energy, and high-tech firms -- has held up well in the Great Recession.  It didn’t fall victim to the housing boom and bust (2000 to 2007), so rents and house prices today are remarkably affordable and few homeowners are facing foreclosure.  And the region scores high on lots of “top ten” lists -- most affordable (Forbes), most recession-proof (Forbes), and best to start a small business (Fortune Small Business).

So I decided to grade all of the nation’s 100 biggest metros: which are best and which are worst for family economic security?  The factors (all available from MetroTrends) include unemployment (as of September 2011),  house price decline (between summer 2007 to summer 2011), earnings needed to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment relative to annual earnings from a full-time job in personal services (both measured in 2010), and the share of homeowners who faced serious delinquency as of mid- 2011.

Grading The Top 100 Metros: Economic Security (click below for interactive map)

Source: Urban Institute analysis of LAUS, HPI, NUHC, OES, and LPS data

The ten best metros for economic security? Oklahoma City, Omaha, Wichita, Tulsa, Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Madison, Austin, Baton Rouge, and Buffalo.

And the ten worst? Bakersfield, Palm Bay, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Lakeland, Bradenton-Sarasota, Riverside-San Bernardino, Orlando, Modesto, Stockton, Miami, and Las Vegas.

You can find any metro’s score (and all the underlying factors) by mousing over and clicking on it.  But you can also modify my scoring system.  Maybe unemployment matters more to you than housing affordability or you don’t care about house price erosion at all.  Change the relative importance of the four factors in the box and MetroTrends will recompute the scores and display your new rankings.

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Are Some Metros Better for the 99%?

| Posted: December 5th, 2011

In the decade preceding the Great Recession, I was monitoring housing market trends in the Washington, DC metro area. The region’s economy was booming, population was expanding, and house prices were sky-rocketing. Well-educated people could get great jobs with high pay. But people working low- and medium-wage jobs had a tough time finding affordable homes and apartments. Even so, Washington seemed like a good place to live: unemployment was low and earnings were well above the national average – even for jobs at the bottom of the wage ladder.

Recently, the Occupy Wall Street protests have made me wonder whether the most prosperous metros – New York, DC, and San Francisco, for example – are really good places for the 99% to live.  Despite the crash, housing prices and rents there remain high.  Skilled professionals can probably earn enough to cover housing costs (if they can find work), but lower skilled workers face a real pinch.

Take a look at a few numbers.  If you live in the DC metro, you need to earn about $60,000 to afford the rent for a typical (modest) two-bedroom apartment.  Average earnings just barely exceed that threshold.  If you’re a computer professional, you probably earn much more (over $90,000 on average), but if you’re a personal service worker, you may only earn half of what you need to afford that apartment.  Disparities are equally stark in San Francisco, but the unemployment rate there is almost 10 percent, compared to only 6 percent in the Washington region.

Who Earns Enough to Pay for Decent Housing?

Source: Urban Institute analysis of NLIHC and OES data, available from www.metrotrends.org

How do things look in a low-cost metro like Detroit?  That two-bedroom apartment costs far less, but the personal service worker still can’t afford it.  And the Detroit metro’s unemployment rate stands at 13 percent.

One region that looks good on these metrics is Oklahoma City.  Somehow, it avoided the excesses of the boom years, and its economy has weathered the downturn better than most.  Housing costs are low, and though wages are too, a personal service worker can almost afford the rent for a two-bedroom apartment.  And at 5 percent, Oklahoma City’s unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country.

What can we learn from the Oklahoma City metro about keeping wages and housing costs in better balance through both good times and bad?  For my next blog, I’ll track down some possible answers.

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Moving to Opportunity—or Not?

| Posted: November 3rd, 2011

Where we live – and where our children grow up – matters.  Plenty of research confirms this common-sense conclusion.  Young children, teens, and adults who live in severely distressed and crime-ridden neighborhoods suffer in terms of health, safety, schooling, and employment.

The Moving to Opportunity demonstration (MTO) was launched in the early 1990s to find out what would happen if low-income families with kids could escape from distressed, high-poverty neighborhoods and move into healthy, low-poverty communities.  MTO was inspired by an earlier experiment (the Gautreaux program) in which poor black families in Chicago moved to predominantly white, suburban neighborhoods.  Findings from the Gautreaux experiment suggested that moving to an opportunity-rich neighborhood might lead to better educations for kids and better jobs for their parents.

New evaluation results show that – ten to fifteen years after their initial moves – MTO families do enjoy better health (compared to a control group), but not higher earnings or better test scores.  Why not? One likely explanation is that MTO’s special mobility assistance didn’t enable families to gain and sustain access to high-opportunity neighborhoods.  Although many moved to better housing in safer neighborhoods, few moved to neighborhoods served by high-performing public schools. And few spent more than a year or two in low-poverty neighborhoods.  Rising rents, problems with landlords, and difficulty finding the next apartment all pushed families back to less desirable neighborhoods.

In other words, they didn’t really move to opportunity.  It turns out that helping low-income families find, afford, and hang on to housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods requires more help than anticipated.  Building on the lessons of MTO, mobility assistance programs in Dallas, Chicago, and Baltimore are now offering more hands-on help (with both the first move and subsequent moves) so families they serve can move to and stay in safe neighborhoods with good schools and abundant opportunities for both kids and adults.

It would be a mistake to conclude from the latest MTO findings that neighborhoods aren’t a factor in employment or school success.  But researchers need to dig deeper to figure out whether the MTO families who spent more time in better neighborhoods enjoyed better outcomes so policymakers have the facts they need to design the next generation of housing assistance programs.

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Can Your Neighborhood Make You Sick?

| Posted: October 24th, 2011

Obesity and diabetes threaten more and more Americans, especially those who can’t afford good medical care.  And as Sue Popkin has noted, residents of distressed public housing projects suffer at unusually high rates. The anxiety and stress of living amid crime and violence, lack of nearby grocery stores selling healthy, affordable foods, and the absence of safe places to exercise all undermine people’s health.

Now comes compelling new evidence that moving away from severely distressed neighborhoods can boost health.  Last week, a New England Journal of Medicine study reported on the decade-long Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment, which offered poor families the chance to leave distressed public housing projects and move into low-poverty neighborhoods.  Families who volunteered were randomly assigned to “treatment” and “control” groups and their well-being was monitored over many years.  So the case that living in a distressed neighborhood is bad for your health is particularly strong.

Unfortunately, just telling poor people that – along with eating right and getting more exercise – moving  to better neighborhoods would make them healthier isn’t enough.  Most low-income families are already struggling to afford today’s high rents, and moderately-priced housing is scarce in healthy neighborhoods.

How can public policies respond?  Here are three recommendations:

1. The federal housing voucher program should help participants find neighborhoods where crime and violence are low and where healthy foods and exercise opportunities are abundant. It should discourage them from using precious housing subsidies in dangerous, unhealthy neighborhoods.
2. Cities should give priority to community development investments that make low-income neighborhoods healthier.  That means targeting violent crime, providing affordable sources of healthy food, and operating fun, safe parks and recreation programs.
3. The scarce public subsidies available for rental housing construction should go toward expanding affordable housing options in healthy neighborhoods, not further concentrating poor families in neighborhoods that are making them sick.

Obesity and diabetes don’t just degrade people’s quality of life.  They make it harder to get and keep a job. And they cost a lot to treat.  Investing in prevention, research shows, can yield big savings over time.  Now that we know how much where you live matters, we should craft our housing and community development policies to help rather than hurt.

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Why Federal Policymakers Should be Talking About Children

| Posted: October 13th, 2011

New Census data reveal that almost half of America’s children today are black, Latino, or Asian – very different from the predominantly white population 50 and older.

America’s Children Much More Diverse than Older Generations

Source: 2010 Census data, adapted from William H. Frey

These kids are our future. We need them to grow up healthy, smart, and civically engaged so they can fuel our economy, support us in our old age, buy our homes, and govern our country. But we’re not paying enough attention to the challenges facing minority kids – challenges that undermine their life-chances and our collective future.

Poverty rates are climbing for all kids, but they’re especially high for minority children. As the latest numbers show, almost two of every five black children and more than a third of Latino kids are poor, compared to 12 percent of white kids. The evidence is undeniable that persistent poverty during childhood reduces employment and earnings in adulthood. And my colleague, Harry Holzer, estimates that a 1-percentage point increase in child poverty might cost the economy $28 billion a year in the future.

Black and Latino kids are also much more likely than whites to live in poor neighborhoods, where crime rates are high. A growing body of research shows that children exposed to violence and other severe stresses suffer long-lasting physiological damage that impairs healthy emotional and intellectual development.

Minority children suffer poorer health than their white peers and are less likely to get good medical care. And many public schools aren’t serving minority children well. In school districts across the country, the gaps between white and minority test scores, graduation rates, and college access remain stubbornly high.

It doesn’t take a sophisticated forecasting model to know that today’s kids will be tomorrow’s workers, business owners, and civic leaders. Why aren’t policymakers and political leaders talking about the risks confronting minority children today and the investments in employment, education, health, and neighborhoods that could improve their long-term prospects and our country’s future prosperity?

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Optimistic about the Future of American Cities?

| Posted: September 29th, 2011

As recently as the early 1990s, America’s big cities were widely perceived as trapped in a downward spiral of fiscal, economic, and social distress. I remember attending a conference in 1993 or 1994 during which then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros enthusiastically declared that “the cities are coming back!” He received polite, but very skeptical, applause. But by the  early 2000s, many cities—including the long-suffering District of Columbia—had indeed experienced a remarkable comeback.

Last week, I was lucky to listen in on a conversation between Cisneros and Tony Williams, former mayor of the District of Columbia, about the state of U.S. cities. Both are optimistic about the future and see the current economic downturn as a temporary bump in the road.

The recent reversal in big-city fortunes reflects long-term changes in the economy. Cities suffered mightily from deindustrialization—the painful transition from a mostly manufacturing economy to one dominated by information and services. Now they’re finding new roles in their region’s  economy, as hubs for education, finance, medicine, innovation, arts, and culture. And they’re attracting the kinds of people whose numbers are expanding rapidly: young singles and couples who value diversity, dynamism, and nightlife; empty nesters looking for shorter commutes and smaller yards; and immigrant families seeking economic opportunities.

Better governance helps, too. Cities don’t thrive unless citizens and businesses have confidence in the government’s ability to deliver basic services, like license renewals, inspections, and garbage collection.  And effective mayors listen to their constituents, explaining both their long-term vision and their near-term decisions, responding to legitimate fears and criticism, and monitoring progress.

Looking to the future, both Cisneros and Williams see public education as a major cause for concern. Despite some recent progress, many big city school systems still fail to deliver a decent education. Families with choices about where to live won’t stay in communities with lousy public schools. But more important, today’s children will become tomorrow’s workforce, and the economic vitality of the nation depends on their productivity and inventiveness.

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