School children waiting at the curb theatlantic.com |
Before yours truly gets started on today's subject of segregation, Blogger would like to say hello to @savingplaces and @presonomics and thank them for follow yours truly on Twitter. Onward and upward.
Today we are going to look at the effects of segregation on the upward mobility of low-income children, with the help of Derek Thompson's ominously titled article for The Atlantic, "The Curse of Segregation." Harvard University recently released two unfortunately timed papers that concluded,
...the income mobility for poor children in Baltimore City is worse than in any large county in America. (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org) The study authors, Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren write,
Every year spent in Baltimore "reduces a child's earnings by 0.7 percent per year, generating a total penalty of approximately 14 percent for children who grow up there from birth. (Ibid)
Blogger concurs with Mr. Thompson's comment that Baltimore does not need any more bad publicity.
Baltimore-area row houses theatlantic.com |
The Harvard University Studies are neatly summarized in a series of New York Times articles (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility=shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?abt=002&abg=1). The papers present one very clear result: "Some cities and neighborhoods keep their residents stuck in vicious cycles of poverty while others have a proven track record of turning poorer children into economic success stories. (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org) One paper analyzed low-income families who received HOPE VI vouchers that moved families out of housing projects into counties that experienced less poverty, in a randomized study conducted in the 1990s. Studies done over the past few years concluded that each year spent out of a poverty stricken area during childhood, increases a child's earnings in adulthood.
Fairfax, Virginia smartgrowthamerica.org |
The last two elements, segregation by income and race, are the most important because of the size of their impact and widening our understanding of segregation's long-term effect on children. Messrs. Chetty and Hendren writes,
About 20 percent of the black-white income gap is explained solely by the differences in the counties in which black and white children grow up...But segregation is also bad for rich residents...since areas with higher degrees of segregation and inequality have negative impacts on children's earnings from above-median families. (Ibid)
In short, segregation is a deal with the devil-a reverse Robin Hood.
The Historic DuPage County Courthouse Wheaton, Illinois en.wikipedia.org |
Alana Semuels wrote that despite the scheme's success in Chicago, there are very few programs
that focus on helping African American families move from racially segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods to areas where their children will have access to good schools and less exposure to crime...Those that do exist are all the results of lawsuits.
In calculating the costs of moving from a city's worst neighborhood to its best, Messrs. Chetty and Hendren write,
twenty years of exposure to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as opposed to Baltimore for makes in below-median income families would increase their income by 44.7 percent.
Derek Thompson laments, "But here again the scars of segregation show. Blacks account for more than 60 percent of the population of Baltimore City. The national average is about 13 percent. Bucks County, however, is just 4 percent."
No comments:
Post a Comment