Ancestry Counts: New Data Helps Create Clearer Picture of Economic Opportunity


The right data is critical to inform effective policy solutions — but data describing the state of equity for particular racial and ethnic communities at the local level is often difficult to access. That is why the National Equity Atlas has added new racial subgroup data to its demographic and economic opportunity indicators.

The latest update better describes the incredible diversity within broad racial/ethnic groups, and can be used to develop targeted strategies to advance racial equity and inclusive growth. Now, when users go to the “detailed race/ethnicity" indicator, they can select “by ancestry” and see more detailed breakdowns of the Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latino, Native American, and White populations (e.g., Filipino, Jamaican, Puerto Rican). Users can also select “by nativity and ancestry” to get a breakdown of the share of each group who are immigrants versus U.S.-born.

These detailed racial/ethnic breakdowns have been added to several of the Atlas's economic opportunity indicators, including: median wage, unemployment, the percentage of workers making $15/hour, disconnected youth, homeownership, and educational attainment. As an example of what these data can reveal, the Atlas team will be posting a series of analyses on the “Data in Action” section of this site, beginning with today’s posts on the "disconnected youth" and "educational attainment" indicators for the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community:
 
“Asian and Pacific Islander activists and organizations have warned about the ‘model minority’ myth for decades. While the API population as a whole often fares above average on socioeconomic indicators, such metrics render invisible subgroup populations within the API community who face barriers to economic opportunities and inclusion.”
 
The National Equity Atlas team will be hosting a 30-minute live demo of the latest data release on Thursday, May 26, 2016, at 3 p.m. Eastern/12 p.m. Pacific. Please register here.
 
You can also read more about the update in today’s Next City article, “More Muscle Added to Equity Tool.”
 
Thank you!
 
The National Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equality (PERE)

National Equity Atlas: April Update

Dear Equity Atlas Users,

Since we launched the Atlas in October 2014, we have wanted to include data that better describes the incredible diversity within broad racial/ethnic groups and challenges the “model minority” myth that impedes action and progress toward racial equity and inclusive growth.
 
We are excited to be taking a first step toward that goal by adding two new breakdowns to our “detailed race/ethnicity” indicator. Now, when you go to that indicator, you can select “by ancestry” and see more detailed breakdowns of the Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latino, Native American, and White populations (e.g., Filipino, Jamaican, Puerto Rican). You can also select “by nativity and ancestry” to get a breakdown of the share of each group who are immigrants versus U.S.-born.
 
To provide some more detailed data for smaller areas, we also created broader geographic categories (e.g., South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, Pacific Islander) that combine a number of ancestries. For a large, diverse region like Los Angeles (see screenshot below), you will get data for many ancestry categories, while for a smaller, less diverse region like Charleston, you will see fewer of the detailed ancestry categories.
 
We hope you enjoy digging in to the data! Here is a blog post highlighting some takeaways from the new data. In a few weeks (on May 23), we will be adding these more detailed racial/ethnic breakdowns to several of our economic opportunity indicators, including:

  • Unemployment
  • Wages: Median
  • Wages: $15/Hour
  • Disconnected Youth
  • Educational Levels
  • Homeownership

 

Thank you!
 
The National Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE)

 

 

 

 

National Equity Atlas Now Includes More Detailed Racial Subgroup Data

Since its debut in October 2014, the National Equity Atlas has disaggregated most of its 31 demographic and equity indicators by race/ethnicity using broad categories defined by the U.S. Census. Today, we are excited to announce the release of more detailed demographic data based on self-reported ancestry for all major racial groups in the U.S. Data for the Asian/Pacific Islander (API), Black, Latino, Native American, and non-Hispanic White populations is now disaggregated by ancestry as well as by nativity (i.e., immigrant or U.S.-born). On May 23, we will be adding these more detailed race/ethnicity cuts to six economic opportunity indicators: median wage, unemployment, the percentage of workers making $15/hour, disconnected youth, educational attainment, and homeownership.
 
We’ll confess: the more detailed socioeconomic indicators are what is really compelling, and you’ll have to wait a little bit longer for them. But the demographic data provides important context, helping you to better understand the racial/ethnic composition of your community, and how it is changing, at a more granular level. Below are some key takeaways from the new data.
 
Immigration policy shows up in the data
 
U.S. immigration policy has and continues to impact our demographics. Two-thirds of the 15.1 million Asian/Pacific Islanders in the U.S. are immigrants, and one in four is a Chinese or Indian immigrant. Due in part to immigration laws, this segment of the population is highly educated. More than 90 percent of the nearly 20,500 Indians of working age in Minnesota have at least a bachelor’s degree as do 86 percent of the 11,400 Chinese people of working age in Irvine, CA. The sheer size of the Chinese and Indian immigrant populations influences overall API averages on many socioeconomic indicators, masking some of the differences among the various populations within the API community and highlighting the importance of disaggregating by racial subgroups.
 
Asian and Pacific Islander communities cluster in Pacific Rim cities, but also inland cities like St. Paul
 
Of the 100 largest cities, New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have the largest populations of Chinese people, while Long Beach, CA has the largest population of Cambodians followed by Philadelphia, PA and Stockton, CA. The cities with the largest Indian populations include New York City, San Jose, and Fremont, CA, while St. Paul, MN, Fresno, CA and Sacramento, CA have the largest Hmong populations. The Los Angeles and Seattle regions are home to the largest populations of Samoans outside of Hawaii while the San Francisco region has the largest population of Tongans. Explore the API subgroups more here.
 
People of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Dominican heritage also cluster in certain cities
 
The immigrant to U.S.-born ratio for Latinos is basically the reverse of that for APIs. Nearly two in three of the 50.5 million Latinos are born in the U.S. Mexicans make up more than half of the total Latino population followed by “Other Latinos,” respondents who identified as Latino but did not specify a specific nationality or ancestry. The regions with the largest Mexican populations are in California and Texas while the regions with the largest populations of Puerto Ricans are located entirely in the east with the exception of Los Angeles (which ranked 15th). The city of Los Angeles is home to 14 percent of Salvadorans in the U.S., of which 35 percent are U.S.-born and New York City is home to 42 percent of the total Dominican population, 40 percent of whom are U.S.-born. Explore the Latino subgroups more here.
 
Data reveals differences within Black and White populations
 
Nearly 3.7 million people identified as non-Hispanic White with American Indian ancestry. This population is thus included in White averages and as a White subgroup but is 1.8 times larger than the total Native American/Alaskan Native (NAAN) population. Ten percent are located in Texas with 94,000 American Indian non-Hispanic White-identified people in the Dallas region alone. Aside from “Other Native American/Alaskan Native,” Cherokees make up the largest subgroup of the total NAAN population and more than 28,000 Cherokees live in the Tulsa region. Roughly 2.4 million non-Hispanic White people identified as Middle Eastern/North African (MENA). Seventeen percent of the MENA population lives in the Los Angeles region though the New York City, Chicago, and Detroit regions also have sizeable MENA populations. Eighty-six percent of Black/African Americans identified as “Other Black,” which is largely comprised of those identifying simply as “African American” to the ancestry question. Jamaicans were the next largest subgroup followed by Haitians. Well over half of the Jamaican and Haitian populations live in the New York City or Miami region.
 
We invite you to explore your city or region and look out next month for the release of socioeconomic indicators at the more detailed race/ethnicity level. Feel free to contact us with any questions or let us know how you’re using the data!

National Equity Atlas: March Update

Dear Equity Atlas users,

It has been an eventful couple of weeks! Since Leap Day, the Atlas has grown by three new indicators, been featured at the White House, and powered new data-driven stories about the economic imperative of equity in The Atlantic, Grist, and elsewhere. Here is a recap:

New Data on School Poverty

  • The concentration of students of color in schools where most of their classmates are poor is a major driver of the achievement gap — and a critical indicator of whether communities are setting up their young people to succeed. Our new School Poverty indicator shares this data by race/ethnicity, grade level, and over time, from 2000 to 2014.
  • Ron Brownstein and his “Next America” team at The Atlantic used our data to investigate trends and solutions in the nation’s 100 largest cities, producing three stories: "The Concentration of Poverty in American Schools," "Separate and Still Unequal," and "Where Children Rarely Escape Poverty" (focusing on Charlotte).
  • Writer Alan Gottlieb drew on Atlas data to explore school poverty trends in Denver and Colorado Springs for The Colorado Trust’s blog.

 

New Data on Air Pollution

  • Decades of studies show that people of color are far more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods, leading to greater risks of asthma, cancer, and other health problems that hinder well-being and productivity. Last week, we added two indicators—Air Pollution: Exposure Index and Air Pollution: Unequal Burden—that measure the level of exposure to air toxics for residents as well as the extent to which a given demographic group shoulders a disproportionate burden of the area’s air pollution.
  • Grist’s Aura Bogado wrote about how these indicators reveal how race still trumps poverty when it comes to air pollution in “Money doesn’t matter: White people breathe cleaner air.”
  • We presented these new indicators alongside the EPA’s EJSCREEN mapping tool on a webinar co-sponsored by the EPA and the APA titled “New Data Tools for Supporting Analysis of Equitable Development and Environmental Justice.” Watch it here.

 

White House Opportunity Project 

We added these new environmental indicators as a part of the White House Opportunity Project effort to “build digital tools that help families, community leaders, local officials, and the media to access what they need to thrive” based on open data provided by federal and local governments. Check out the other tools or read Tanvi Misra’s overview for CityLab.

 

Next Up: Disaggregating the Asian, Latino, and Black Populations

Now that those indicators are out, we’ve begun diving back into the data to work out our method for providing more detailed subgroup data for demographic and selected socioeconomic indicators. Stay tuned for a launch schedule.


Thank you for being a part of the movement to use data to build an equitable economy! Please take a moment to tell us how you are using Atlas data.

The National Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and PERE

School Poverty Data Highlighted in The Atlantic

 

In a recent story in The Atlantic, Janie Boschma and Ronald Brownstein use new data from the National Equity Atlas to explore the racial concentration of school poverty. In “The Concentration of Poverty in American Schools,” Boschma and Brownstein note that in about half of the nation’s largest 100 cities, most Black and Latino students go to schools where at least 75 percent of all students qualify as poor or low-income. They write,

“This systemic economic and racial isolation looms as a huge obstacle for efforts to make a quality education available to all American students. Researchers have found that the single-most powerful predictor of racial gaps in educational achievement is the extent to which students attend schools surrounded by other low-income students.”

Percent of students by school poverty level: United States, 2014


The authors discuss the root causes of concentrated poverty as well as promising school integration models from Dallas and New York City as strategies to address these gaps. The Atlantic also cites the National Equity Atlas’s school poverty indicator in the stories “Separate and Still Unequal” and “Where Children Rarely Escape Poverty.”

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