Atlas Data Helps Make the Case that Poverty Is More Than A “State of Mind”

Atlas Data Helps Make the Case that Poverty Is More Than A “State of Mind”

In a recent op-ed for Teen Vogue, writer Lincoln Blades disputes the perception that poverty is a mindset, responding to Ben Carson’s comment during a radio interview, “I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind. You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.”

Blades uses National Equity Atlas as a resource to outline the extent that Americans experience poverty as a tangible, lived reality, showing:

  • There are more than 100 million Americans living at or below 200 percent of the poverty line.

  • The share of Americans working full-time and landing in poverty increased between 2000 and 2012.

He writes, “Poverty in America is less about something that you do to yourself, and more about something that is done to you, either against your will or without your knowledge and consent. Poverty isn't about your state of mind as much as it is about policy and plunder.”

Read the full story in Teen Vogue.

National Equity Atlas Update

Dear Atlas Users,

It has been a busy month! We released new profiles in Buffalo and Grand Rapids, and are working to finalize several others while doing some strategic planning for the next few years of the Equity Atlas. We are also beginning to think about the equity data elements of the upcoming Equity Summit 2018 to be held in Chicago April 11-13. Mark your calendars now!

Data Driving Health Equity Action in Buffalo
With millions in public and private investments on the horizon, Buffalo is poised for resurgence. But the city’s long-term prosperity hinges on addressing its wide racial and economic inequities in health, wealth, and opportunity. On May 8, in partnership with Open Buffalo and through the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we released a profile and policy brief showcasing health equity as the path to stronger and more inclusive growth in Buffalo. At the event, Atlas team member Ángel Ross shared data showing how Buffalo’s economy could have been over $4 billion stronger in 2014 absent its racial gaps in income, and community leaders discussed how strategies such as inclusionary zoning, community land trusts, and anchor investments in health and economic inclusion can move the city forward for all.

Grand Rapids Equity Profile Released at Facing Inclusion Event
On April 26, An Equity Profile of Grand Rapids was released during a panel discussion and community forum at 2017 FORUM: Facing Inclusion, a convening held by Partners for a Racism-Free Community focused on elevating issues of equity in the city. The profile lends new analyses to support important action already being lead by local advocates to create more equitable opportunities for all residents of the city. Since January, PolicyLink and PERE have been working with advocates in Grand Rapids to develop an equity profile of the city, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

In the News…
Several local and national news outlets covered the Long Island and New Orleans profiles that were released last month:


Thank you!

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

National Equity Atlas Update

Dear Equity Atlas Users,

Happy April! It has been a busy month with the release of three new equity profiles for Fresno county, New Orleans city, and Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties). We have enjoyed working with many local partners to produce critical data to inform equitable growth strategies in these very different communities.

Kicking Things Off in Fresno
Since January, PolicyLink and PERE have been working with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability to develop an equity profile of Fresno County, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The profile and policy brief were released on April 11 at a forum and panel discussion focused on the implications for this research in health equity campaigns. In addition to the unique data analysis, the documents contain actionable solutions for residents, advocates, business leaders, and policymakers seeking to reduce racial inequalities and build a stronger Fresno. The Leadership Counsel intends to use the information in the profile to mobilize residents and advocates around California’s Transformative Climate Communities Program.

New Data Profile Supports City of New Orleans Equity Strategy
On April 20, the City of New Orleans officially launched its Equity Strategy, describing how local government will do its part to build a stronger, more inclusive city by advancing equity through its operations and decisionmaking. At the event, PolicyLink and PERE released an equity profile of New Orleans, the first of a series of ten new equity profiles produced with the support of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. PolicyLink has been working with the Office of Mayor Landrieu to provide assistance with developing its equity strategy for the past year through its All-In Cities initiative, and Senior Director Sarah Treuhaft participated on the panel at the launch event and then held a session to share the findings of the equity profile.

Empowering Black Long Island
An Equity Profile of Long Island was released today in partnership with the Long Island Urban League and through the support of Citi Community Development, the Long Island Community Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The profile and policy brief, Empowering Black Long Island: How Equity Is Key to the Future of Nassau and Suffolk Counties highlight how Long Island is rapidly growing more diverse, yet persistent racial inequities thwart inclusive prosperity in the region. Black Long Islanders in particular, who were largely excluded from the massive federally subsidized suburban development that characterizes Long Island, continue to face barriers to full social, economic, and political inclusion. These inequities put the region’s long-term economic future at risk: Long Island’s economy could have been nearly $24 billion stronger in 2014 alone if racial gaps in income were eliminated. Check out the conversation that took place on social media at #EquityLongIsland.

Atlas Data Supports Argument against State Preemption in Facing South
In a recent op-ed, Allie Yee of the Institute for Southern Studies details how Republican-controlled statehouses in the South have been pushing to undermine local authority in liberal-leaning cities. She uses National Equity Atlas data to prove that workers of color bear the brunt of the consequences of Georgia’s bans on local minimum wage increases and local requirements for paid leave. To learn more about the working poor in your state, explore the working poor indicator on the Atlas.

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

Atlas Data Supports Argument against State Preemption

In a recent op-ed published in Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies, Allie Yee details how Republican-controlled statehouses in the South have been pushing to undermine local authority in liberal-leaning cities. Moreover, that, “the brunt of those consequences are borne disproportionately by women, people of color, LGBT people, low-income communities, immigrants and those at the intersection of these identities.”

 

She uses National Equity Atlas data to show who suffers the consequences of Georgia’s bans on local minimum wage increases and local requirements for paid leave, writing:

In 2014, according to the National Equity Atlas, 16.6 percent of women of color and 17.7 percent of men of color in the state were considered working poor, defined as those working full-time and living below 200 percent of the poverty level. That compares to only 7.8 percent of white men and 6.1 percent of white women.

To learn more about the working poor in your state, explore the working poor indicator on the Atlas.

National Equity Atlas Update

Dear Equity Atlas Users,

Spring is a busy time for equity data! Our team is hard at work producing 15 new equity profiles, most of which will be released in April and May. We also began digging into our new project focused on employment equity in southern states, and hosted a webinar sharing local jobs equity strategies in New Orleans and Minneapolis.

Employment Equity in Southern States Project Launched
Quality employment is the foundation of a thriving, shared prosperity economy, but even in today's nearly "full employment" economy, many workers of color remain jobless, underemployed, or struggling to get by in low-wage, precarious jobs. With support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, PolicyLink and PERE are working to build employment equity in five southern states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina. We will analyze the potential economic gains of realizing full employment for workers of every race and gender and work with local partners in each state to effectively frame the research, understand barriers to employment, and present policy solutions at the state and local level. Last week marked the official launch of the project in Alabama, where we are partnering with the Alabama Asset Building Coalition; and Georgia in with the Partnership for Southern Equity.

Webinar Recap: Targeted Strategies to Reduce Employment Inequality
U.S. unemployment rates have fallen across the board, but joblessness remains a pressing challenge for workers of color in many metros. Building on the analysis in our recent brief, Race, Place, and Jobs: Reducing Employment Inequality in America’s Metros, the National Equity Atlas team hosted a webinar on March 23 to lift up local approaches and strategies to close the employment gap in areas of racially concentrated unemployment. Our guest speakers were Asali Ecclesiastes, Claiborne Corridor program manager at the Network for Economic Opportunity (an initiative of the City of New Orleans), and Tawanna Black, executive director of the Neighborhood Funders Group in Minneapolis. You can view the webinar recording online and download the slides now.

#DayWithoutAWoman and St. Louis’s Minimum Wage Win
In the latest Chart of the Week posts, PolicyLink Research Associate Ángel Ross looked at two issues critical to advancing equitable growth locally.

  • For International Women’s Day and in solidarity with the #DayWithoutAWoman campaign, this analysis of the gender wage gap in Oakland highlights the racial and gender-based discrimination that continues to relegate women of color to the lower rungs of the economic system.
  • After the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the city of St. Louis’s authority to raise its minimum wage to $11/hour by 2018 earlier this month, this chart underscores the importance of this victory. Black and Latino full-time workers in the city are 2.5 to 3 times more likely than White full-time workers to live in poverty.


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

#ADayWithoutAWoman Highlights Racial and Gender-Based Discrimination

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

Today is International Women’s Day and folks across the country are participating in the Women’s March #DayWithoutAWoman and the International Women’s Strike. Both efforts are focused around the economy—highlighting the lower wages, lack of job security, and greater vulnerability to harassment that many women and femmes face as well as the various forms of unpaid emotional labor expected of women and femmes on the job and at home.

In solidarity with #DayWithoutAWoman, this week’s chart highlights the racial and gender-based discrimination that continues to relegate women of color to the lower rungs of the economic system. The chart below shows median hourly wages of full-time wage and salary workers ages 25 to 64 by race/ethnicity and gender in the city of Oakland, California. Surprisingly, there is no gender wage gap if we do not break down the population by race: the median wage of all women in Oakland is $24/hour, the same as it is among all men. But when we factor in race, the largest gender wage gaps are among White workers. The median wage of White male workers in the city is $4/hour more than the median wage of White female workers.  But White women have a median wage that is $9/hour more than that of Black men and women and $16/hour more than the median wage of Latino men and women. The gender wage gaps are nonexistent among Black and Latino workers and Asian or Pacific Islander women and women of mixed/other races actually have a slightly higher median wage than their male counterparts. Importantly, women of color are more likely than men of color to have an associate’s degree or higher.

Policies to ensure living wages for all workers include raising the floor on low-wage work by increasing the minimum wage or enacting living-wage laws, requiring paid sick days, ending wage theft, strengthening workers’ rights to organize, and ensuring fair scheduling. Businesses in King County (Seattle), Washington are signing on to an initiative pledging to identify internal gender equity issues, share lessons with other employers, and implement best practices to close the gender wage gap.

To see how median wages vary by race/ethnicity and gender in your community, visit the National Equity Atlas and type in your city, region, or state, download and share the chart using #DayWithoutAWomen and #equitydata.

Chart of the Week: St. Louis Wins Court Battle to Raise Minimum Wage

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

On Tuesday, in a victory for working families, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the city of St. Louis’s authority to raise its minimum wage to $11/hour by 2018. The decision reverses the 2015 ruling of a lower court judge who sided with business groups that sued the City in response to the ordinance. The Missouri Supreme Court judge who presided over the case reiterated that the city law does not conflict with state minimum wage laws: “[The state law’s] purpose of protecting employees is served by setting a floor for minimum wages; nothing in the law suggests the state also wanted to protect employers by setting a maximum minimum wage.” Although this ruling is a win for St. Louis workers, a separate 2015 state law prevents any other local jurisdictions from passing their own minimum wage increases, regardless of the local cost of living.

To highlight the importance of local minimum wages, this week’s chart looks at the share of full-time workers with a family income below 100, 150, and 200 percent of poverty in the city of St. Louis. As the chart below shows, nearly 29 percent of Black full-time workers ages 25 to 64 live below 200 percent of poverty compared with 10 percent of White full-time workers. Even more strikingly, nearly 7 percent of Latino full-time workers live below the federal poverty line compared with just over 2 percent of White full time workers. In other words, Black and Latino full-time workers in the city are 2.5 to 3 times more likely than White full time workers to live in poverty.

In a statement, St. Louis Aldermanic President Lewis Reed said, “Today, the Supreme Court justified our rights as a city to make sure the people in our city can make a living wage. The people of St. Louis need to be able to afford groceries for their families and a roof over their heads.” According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage for one adult with two children in St. Louis is just over $25/hour, but this victory puts the city on the right path to ensuring that all full-time workers earn family supporting wages.

To explore policies that lift workers out of poverty, check out the Agenda to Raise America’s Pay and the Tax Alliance for Economic Mobility’s brief on utilizing tax credits for low-income workers.

To see how working poverty varies for your city, region, or state, visit the National Equity Atlas, download the chart and share on social media using #equitydata.

National Equity Atlas Air Pollution Data Featured in The Seattle Times

In a recent Seattle Times op-ed, Peter Bloch Garcia, executive director of Latino Community Fund of Washington, and Tony Leeco-chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition in King County, used air pollution data from the National Equity Atlas to make the case for more equitable climate policies in Washington state.

"The National Equity Atlas illustrates that air-pollution exposure in the Asian Pacific Islander population is 34 points worse than it is for the white population in Washington state."

Urging state legislators to take action on climate and environmental justice, the authors explained that “While environmental justice champions at the federal level must play defense, Washington state should be on offense. We can rebalance uneven access to healthy neighborhoods and create green jobs.”

Visit the National Equity Atlas to learn more about our two air pollution indicators (Exposure index and Unequal burden) and explore the data for your region.

National Equity Atlas Update

Dear Equity Atlas Users,

The House of Representatives will soon bring its HUD funding bill for the remainder of FY17 to the floor for a vote, and Representative Gosar (Arizona-04) is likely to file an amendment that would dismantle the 2015 Affirmative Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule and eliminate federal support for disaggregated geospatial data. This data is critical for communities and advocates to understand, track, and address racial inequities related to housing, employment, transportation, and many other important causes. Please join the National Fair Housing Alliance, PolicyLink, the ACLU Nationwide, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition and sign this letter encouraging Congress to protect AFFH and oppose any efforts to block access to federal geospatial data.

Race, Place, and Jobs: Reducing Employment Inequality in America’s Metros
Earlier this month Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity featured a post from PolicyLink Senior Director Sarah Treuhaft, discussing how to build stronger and more inclusive regional economies by using neighborhood-targeted approaches to reduce racial inequities in employment. Read the full post and download the related brief here.

Addressing Racially Concentrated Unemployment: Lessons from New Orleans
U.S. unemployment rates have fallen across the board, but joblessness remains a pressing challenge for workers of color in many metros. Join the National Equity Atlas team on March 23 from 12:00 - 12:45 p.m. PT / 3:00 - 3:45 p.m. ET for a webinar discussion of our recent research brief, “Race, Place, and Jobs: Reducing Employment Inequality in America’s Metros,” and lessons from the Network for Economic Opportunity’s efforts to develop targeted solutions to unemployment in New Orleans. Register here.

Advancing Health Equity and Inclusive Growth in Sacramento County
On February 2, PolicyLink launched an engagement with the Healthy Sacramento Coalition to develop strategies to both promote racial equity and improve health outcomes for residents of Sacramento County. Founded in 2011 and supported by the Sierra Health Foundation, the Healthy Sacramento Coalition has grown to include more than 60 members actively working to address the social determinants of health. Sacramento is one of five cities where PolicyLink is working with partners to address racial inequities in health, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Coupling rigorous data analysis with the wisdom and experience of community leaders and residents, this engagement will yield a comprehensive equity profile that the Coalition will use to advance a focused policy agenda. The profile and report will be released in late April 2017.

Saving Federal Geospatial Databases and More Charts of the Week
Collecting and publishing disaggregated data is critical to advancing equitable growth locally, as illustrated in three recent charts of the week from PolicyLink Research Associate Ángel Ross.

  • The latest chart of the week, “Save AFFH and Federal Geospatial Databases,” highlights the importance of spatial data and the AFFH rule by showing two maps of unemployment in Memphis, Tennessee. The AFFH rule provides local jurisdictions with spatial data to ensure that federal dollars go towards making all communities neighborhoods of opportunity.
  • "Pittsburgh Mayor Peduto Signs Five Executive Orders," our February 17 chart of the week, looks at renter housing burden in the city of Pittsburgh.
  • Finally, our February 7 chart of the week highlights immigrants’ contribution to growth in Cincinnati – one of the newest cities to defy the president’s executive order on immigration and declare itself a sanctuary city. Immigrants in Cincinnati make up less than 5 percent of the population but have accounted for all of the city’s population growth since 1990.

Thank you!

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

Chart of the Week: Save AFFH and Federal Geospatial Databases

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

Last month, we wrote about the dangers of the proposed Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2017, and this week we heard that the House of Representatives may bring its HUD funding bill for the remainder of FY17 to the floor for a vote next week. Representative Paul Gosar (Arizona-04) will likely file an amendment that adopts some or all of the language in the bill.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, PolicyLink, the ACLU, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition have coordinated to prepare a sign on letter in opposition to Rep. Gosar’s expected amendment. CLICK HERE to read and sign on to the letter, and please share with your local, state, and national networks! The deadline to sign on is Tuesday, February 28.

As letter describes, even though the Fair Housing Act has been on the books for nearly a half century, cities, counties and states that receive federal funds for housing and community development had little guidance about how to fulfill the fair housing obligations to which they agreed in exchange for receiving those funds, and few tools for doing so. The 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule responds to requests from HUD grantees for greater guidance and more support in furthering fair housing, as well as recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office in a 2010 report based on its review of HUD’s fair housing oversight.

This week’s chart highlights the importance of spatial data and this rule in particular by showing two maps of unemployment in Memphis, Tennessee. The map on the left shows white unemployment by neighborhood and the map on the right shows unemployment for people of color by neighborhood. The darker blue census tracts represent areas where the unemployment rate is more than 20 percent. On the white unemployment map, there are only a few neighborhoods where unemployment is higher than 20 percent but on the people of color map, there are several clustered throughout the city. Racial differences in employment result from differences in education, training, and experience as well as barriers to employment for workers of color such as English language ability, immigration status, criminal records, lack of transportation access, and racial discrimination and bias among employers and institutions. The AFFH rule provides local jurisdictions with spatial data like this to ensure that federal dollars go towards making all communities neighborhoods of opportunity.

Please consider signing on the letter and sharing it with your local, state, and national networks and share on social media why you oppose amendments to the T-HUD bill that would repeal HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, require HUD to use its limited resources to duplicate previous consultations with state and local governments about how to fulfill their fair housing obligations, and block public access to government geo-spatial data.

To see how unemployment varies in your city, region, or state, visit the National Equity Atlas and share the map of your community using #equitydata.

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