Chart of the Week: #RentersDayofAction

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, thousands are taking to the streets across the country to protest rising and unaffordable rents in what organizers are calling the “largest renter-led protest in recent history.” In 2012, more than half (51 percent) of renters were spending more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent, but the rates are even higher in some of the nation’s largest 100 cities.

To lift up the #RentersDayofAction demands calling for an end to rising rents and unjust evictions, this week’s chart looks at housing burden for renters, or the percent of renter-occupied households spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent, among the largest 100 cities. Though cost-burdened households have decreased slightly among renters based on the latest data, the greatest benefits have gone to homeowners with a mortgage.

In 2012, 72 percent of renters in Hialeah, FL were housing burdened as were two in three Miami renters. The top five cities with the highest housing burdens were:

Housing is the single largest expense for most households and high housing costs squeeze household budgets leaving few resources to pay for other expenses, save for emergencies, or make long-term investments. The Urban Displacement Project, run by the University of California Berkeley, found that Bay Area cities with rent control laws saw less turnover in their renter populations and that rent control is most effective when paired with other tenant protections like just cause evictions policies. For a more extensive overview of strategies to resist gentrification, see Causa Justa Just Cause’s Development without Displacement report.

To view how affordability ranks in your community or how rates of housing burden vary by race/ethnicity or tenure, visit the National Equity Atlas and type in your city, region, or state. Download the charts and share them on social media using #RentersDayofAction and #equitydata.

Chart of the Week: Why the Latest U.S. Census Report Matters

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.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released a report on 2015 income and poverty data, announcing that median household income increased by over 5 percent—the fastest growth on record. As President Obama described in a Facebook post and video with Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the gains were largest among the bottom fifth of households.

To highlight why this gain — especially among the bottom quintile of earners — is so important, this week’s chart looks at real earned income growth for full-time wage and salary workers in the United States from 1980 to 2012.

Over the three decades from 1980 to 2012, the inflation-adjusted earnings of the bottom 10 percent of workers decreased the most at more than 11 percent. In fact, the whole bottom half of workers experienced real declines in their incomes over this period. At the other end, those in the top 10 percent saw their earnings increase by nearly 15 percent. The announcement that real income growth in 2015 was the fastest since 1969 for households at the 10th, 20th, 40th, 50th, and 60th percentiles is a promising finding, though there is still more to be done.

These income increases, combined with refundable tax credits, lifted millions of families and children out of poverty. In 2015, 9.2 million Americans, including 4.8 million children, moved above the poverty line with the help of credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Expanding these social safety net programs through a more equitable tax code and advancing pre-tax income strategies like minimum wage increases and stronger collective bargaining rights are key to supporting the more than 8 million families still in poverty. For more information on policies that contribute to wage growth, see the Economic Policy Institute’s Agenda to Raise America’s Pay.

To view the distribution of income growth in your community over the last three decades, visit the National Equity Atlas and type in your city, region, or state. Download the charts and share them on social media using #equitydata.

Chart of the Week: Disconnected Native Youth in North Dakota

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

In what some are calling the largest gathering of tribal nations in 150 years, a multigenerational coalition has assembled in North Dakota to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL). Proponents of the 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline tout the economic benefits of the project in the wake of a declining state economy, but this project is not the way to foster sustainable and equitable growth in North Dakota’s Native communities.

To lift up this Native-led struggle to protect ancestral land and water in Standing Rock, this week’s chart looks at the share of young people ages 16 to 24 in North Dakota who are disconnected from work and school.

In North Dakota, Native American young people are the most likely among the major racial/ethnic groups to be disconnected from work and school. More than one in three Native American young people are neither working nor in school, compared with one in four Latinos and just 5 percent of Whites. Native Americans make up the second largest race/ethnic group in the state, but they continue to face steep barriers to economic inclusion, while inequitable development projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline threaten destruction of their sacred burial sites and water access.

Widespread youth disconnection hurts not only Native Americans and Latinos, but also the North Dakota economy. State policymakers can simultaneously invest in their economies and their most vulnerable populations by building robust cradle-to-career pipelines that support children and families, and by connecting young people of color to opportunities through targeted workforce training programs, apprenticeships, internships, and career academies.

To see how Native Americans fare across other indicators in North Dakota, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in North Dakota, and select an indicator. Download the charts and share them on social media using #equitydata and #NoDAPL.

Webinar Archive: 3 Ways to Use Equity Atlas Chart Downloads Webinar

The National Equity Atlas has improved chart downloads. To learn how to use this improved functionality, watch our latest webinar, “3 Ways to Use Equity Atlas Chart Downloads.” Here is the webinar recording and slides. We encourage you to share with your network.

Also, take a few minutes to review the material shared during the webinar. We created a mini-profile template and a social media tip sheet describing the different ways you can use our Atlas charts to promote your work.You can also follow our new #ChartoftheWeek series on the Atlas and on our @PolicyLink Twitter.       

Find analyses of our newest data updates here, in the “Data in Action” section:

·       Why U.S.-born Latinos Tend to Fare Better than Immigrant Latinos

·       Latino Immigrants Face Uphill Battle to Economic Inclusion

·       The Challenge of Youth Disconnectedness Among Latinas

We invite you to join our next live webinar, "Special Preview: Neighborhood Mapping on the Atlas", scheduled for Thursday, October 6, at 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm PT. We will be previewing our new mapping system and seeking feedback from you in advance of our public release in October. 

Please feel free to contact Sarah Treuhaft at sarah@policylink.org with any questions, or visit our “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the Atlas to scan commonly asked questions.

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

Chart of the Week: #Fightfor15 this Labor Day

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

In honor of #LaborDay and the #Fightfor15, this week’s chart looks at the share of workers earning at least $15/hour in California. In an equitable economy, all workers would earn enough to support their family, or a “living wage.” What constitutes a living wage varies based on family size, but $15/hour is a good benchmark for understanding which groups are least likely to be earning a living wage. The fight for a $15/hour minimum wage is also an important campaign that continues to gain momentum.

In California, among full-time workers ages 25 to 64, Latinos are the least likely to make at least $15/hour. 49 percent of Latino women and 54 percent of Latino men earned at least $15/hour in 2012 compared with 81 percent of White women and 87 percent of White men. Latinos are the single largest ethnic group in California, but they continue to face some of the steepest barriers to economic inclusion.

Low wages among the growing Latino population is bad for families and bad for California’s economy: more money in the hands of workers means greater demand for goods and services. Research shows that companies can pay living wages and remain profitable, in part because paying higher wages reduces turnover and increases productivity.

Thanks to policy changes, we should soon see positive changes on this indicator. The minimum wage in California is currently $10/hour, but earlier this year, state lawmakers struck a deal to gradually raise the state minimum wage to $15/hour by 2022.

To see how the share of workers earning at least $15/hour varies by race/ethnicity and gender in your community, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your city, region, or state, and select the “By gender” breakdown. Download and tweet at us the chart for your community using #equitydata and #Fightfor15.

Chart of the Week: #BlackWomensEqualPay

As America becomes a majority people-of-color nation, equity—just and fair inclusion—is the key to building strong communities and a strong economy. Understanding the state of equity in your community is critical for developing and making the case for solutions that foster equitable growth.

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, today the National Equity Atlas team is launching a new “Chart of the Week” series. Every week, we will post a new chart drawing from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

In honor of #BlackWomensEqualPay, this week’s chart looks at median wages for Black women in Atlanta, Georgia.

As the chart shows, Black women earn the lowest wages among full-time workers in Atlanta. With a median wage of $14/hour, Black women earn $20/hour less than White men and $13/hour less than White women. While White men and women earn more in Atlanta than the national average for their race and gender, Black women earn less in Atlanta than the national average for Black women ($16/hour), exacerbating racial inequities in the city.

There are many strategies that communities can take to address race and gender equity in pay, such as Boston’s 100% Talent Compact, in which businesses commit to sharing disaggregated data with the city’s Women’s Workforce Council to inform targeted policy solutions. In King County (Seattle), Washington, businesses are signing on to a similar initiative and 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 Black women fare in your community, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your city, region, or state, and select the “By gender” breakdown. Download and tweet at us the chart for your community using #60cents #equitydata @PolicyLink.

The Challenge of Youth Disconnectedness Among Latinas

By the end of this decade, the majority of youth under age 18 will be people of color. Their ability to succeed in the labor force will determine the strength of our economy in the decades to come. Yet, data on youth disconnectedness show we are failing the very people we are supposed to nurture, educate, and prepare to become the leaders of tomorrow. As the National Equity Atlas shows, there are 5.5 million young people ages 16 to 24 who are “disconnected” — neither working nor in school — and the majority of them are people of color.

Reconnecting these young people to education, skills, and career pathways is critical for their economic futures — and for our national prosperity. A study by scholars at Queens College, City University of New York and Teachers College, Columbia University calculates that every disconnected youth costs society $700,000 throughout their lifetime. To develop targeted solutions, it is critical to understand which youth face the greatest challenges, and that is why we added gender breakdowns to the “Disconnected youth” indicator on the Atlas.

A look at this new data reveals some surprising differences in youth disconnectedness by gender for Black and Latino young people. Below, we examine how youth disconnectedness varies by race and gender nationally, followed by a closer look at cities with the highest rates of disconnected Latinas.

Latinas face particularly high rates of youth disconnectedness

Of all major race and gender combinations, young Native American men are the most likely to be disconnected in the U.S. as a whole: 28 percent of Native American men ages 16 and 24 are neither in school nor working, followed by 25 percent of Native American young women. Young Black men are about as likely as Native American women to be disconnected. An unexpected finding is that one in five young Latinas are disconnected from school and work — a rate four percentage points higher than that for young Latinos.

Black and Native American young men are more likely to be disconnected than their female counterparts, while Latino and Asian and Pacific Islander young men are less likely to be disconnected than their female counterparts.

Cities with the highest share of disconnected Latinas 

To explore how youth disconnectedness varies for young Latinas across the largest 100 cities, we looked at the cities with the highest and lowest rates of disconnection among Latinas. There was enough data on Latinas ages 16 to 24 in 69 of the 100 largest cities. The share of Latinas in this age group who are not working or in school ranges from 40 percent in Detroit to 2 percent in Irvine, California. Detroit also has the greatest overall share of disconnected youth at 30 percent of all young people, but Latinas have the highest rate of disconnectedness in that city—6 percentage points higher than the share of disconnected Black men. In four of the five cities with the largest share of disconnected Latinas, Latinas are the most likely of all race-gender groups to be disconnected. In Nashville, Tennessee and Charlotte, North Carolina, one in three Latinas ages 16 to 24 is disconnected.

There could be a number of reasons for the higher rates of Latina disconnectedness in these cities. The Queens College/Teachers College study found that female disconnected youth are more likely to have family responsibilities while male disconnected youth are more likely to be incarcerated. Another study reported that 30 percent of female disconnected youth have children compared with 11 percent of all 16- to 24-year-old females. And in 2014, national Black and Latina teen birth rates were more than two times higher than the rate for White teens. Importantly, poverty and low levels of education correlate with teen pregnancy, and young people in the child welfare system are also more likely to become pregnant.

Early disconnection can have profound impacts later in life, particularly when it comes to employment, health, and participation. The American Public Health Association explained in a recent video that an 18-year-old male in California was more likely to be arrested in 2014 than he was to vote. And there is even evidence suggesting that employers use gaps in work history as a proxy for criminal activity or incarceration, which disproportionately impacts the job prospects of Black men. 

Where do Latinos have higher rates of disconnection than Latinas?

The share of disconnected Latinos is larger than the share of disconnected Latinas in only 11 of the 69 cities with sufficient data on Latina disconnection. In most of those cities, the difference is just a couple percentage points, except in Henderson, Nevada, San Francisco, California, and Irvine, California—the three cities with the lowest rates of disconnection among Latinas. The difference is largest in Irvine, California, where 12 percent of Latinos are disconnected compared with just 2 percent of Latinas.

Strategies for racial and gender justice

Ensuring that all young people are healthy, educated, and connected to opportunities is essential for economic prosperity. Solutions are comprehensive and require participation across education, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. Reforming harsh, “zero tolerance” school discipline policies that put boys and girls of color on track to jail rather than college is key to keeping young people in classrooms. And transforming classroom learning by integrating work-based and linked learning opportunities as well as culturally relevant education can help ensure that students are college and career ready at graduation.

In the quest for targeted strategies that focus resources toward historically disadvantaged populations, disaggregated data is ever more important to ensure that resources reach and benefit the most affected groups. The new gender data added to the National Equity Atlas for the Working poor, Disconnected youth, and Education levels and job requirements indicators allows communities to capture some of this variation in order to better inform local knowledge and strategies.

To learn more about how women and men of color are faring in your community, go to the Indicators tab, select one of the five equity indicators that have data by gender (Working poor, Disconnected youth, Education levels and job requirements, Wages: $15/hour, and Wages: Median), and click on the “By gender” breakdown.

National Equity Atlas: August Updates

Since the movement to build an equitable economy takes no summer vacation, we’ve been hard at work and are happy to share new features on the Equity Atlas:
 
Gender Data Added to Three Indicators
Racial gaps in health, income, employment, and education between Whites and people of color are well established, but how do women of color fare compared with their male counterparts? And what are the effects of race and gender when it comes to economic barriers and opportunities? Today, we added gender breakdowns to three indicators to help answer these questions. In addition to median wage and $15 an hour indicators, which already included these cuts, you can now access data by gender for three more indicators:

 

To see the new gender cuts for your city/region/state, select one of the three indicators mentioned above and click on the “By gender” breakdown.

New and Improved Chart Downloads
To support you in using the Atlas charts, today we are launching new and improved chart downloads that include full titles. When looking at an indicator, simply scroll underneath the graphic display and click on “Graphic (jpeg)” to create presentation and social media-ready images to supplement your campaigns, reports, grant proposals, etc. The titles of the chart provide you with all the information you need to share the chart with others including the indicator, the breakdowns, the geography, and the year.
 
Upcoming Webinar
To learn about three simple ways you might use the new chart downloads to advance equity in your community, register for our next webinar on Thursday, September 1, 2016 from 12pm-12:30pm PST. Video from last month’s webinar, “Explore New Data on Immigrants in the National Equity Atlas” can be viewed here.
 
Understanding How Nativity Matters for Economic Inclusion
Check out our latest analyses of Atlas data: “Now on the National Equity Atlas: Nativity Cuts Added to Eight Indicators” explores the contributions of immigrants to the economy, “Latino Immigrants Face an Uphill Battle to Economic Inclusion” explores working poverty among Latinos, and “Why U.S.-born Latinos Tend to Fare Better than Immigrant Latinos” examines the median wage, educational attainment and socioeconomic indicators between the two groups.
 
Thank you!

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

Why U.S.-born Latinos Tend to Fare Better than Immigrant Latinos

Second generation immigrants show improved socioeconomic outcomes over their parents. Despite America’s many challenges in creating equitable opportunities, it is a rare bright spot in the nation’s racial and ethnic landscape. New data added to the National Equity Atlas in July shows how U.S.-born Latinos trail U.S.-born Whites in education, wages, and poverty, but still fare better than their immigrant counterparts (with one notable exception).

The recently added nativity breakdowns in the National Equity Atlas allow users to compare outcomes for immigrants and U.S.-born people. In the analysis below, we compare the outcomes of Latinos and Whites with a specific focus on those who are U.S.-born across three socioeconomic indicators: median wage, educational attainment, and poverty, and suggest some reasons why this stratification might persist. For reference, two thirds of Latinos were born in the United States, while 95 percent of Whites are U.S.-born citizens.  

The White-Latino wage gap is smaller among the U.S.-born population

The median wage for Latino workers is $7 less than the median wage for White workers. When looking only at U.S.-born workers, however, the wage gap decreases: U.S.-born Latinos only trail U.S.-born Whites by $4. This narrower wage gap can be explained, in part, by the fact that U.S.-born Latinos earn a much higher median wage ($18/hour) than their immigrant counterparts ($13/hour).


Regions with the greatest numbers of Latinos have larger wage gaps

To better understand how this wage gap varies by region and with the size of the overall Latino population, we looked at the six U.S. metro areas with the largest numbers of Latinos: Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, and Riverside, California. Taken together, these six metro areas are home to 37 percent of the total Latino population in the United States.

In nearly all of these regions, the wage disparities between U.S.-born Whites and U.S.-born Latinos are higher than the national average. The wage gap in the Los Angeles and New York metros reach as high as $10/hour—$6/hour more than the national wage gap between U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born Whites. Only Miami has a wage gap comparable to the national average.

Why is the wage gap between U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born Whites so much higher than the national average in the regions where the most Latinos live? It is mainly being driven by the particularly high wages of U.S.-born Whites in these regions. As the chart above illustrates, U.S.-born Latinos in all six regions have higher median wages than the national average of $18/hour, reaching as high as $21/hour in the New York metro area. U.S.-born Whites in all six regions also have median wages that are above the national average of $22/hour, reaching as high as $31/hour in New York. As a consequence, the median wage gap tends to be significantly above the national average in these regions, despite U.S.-born Latinos also reporting higher median wages.

Both place and educational attainment affect median wages

Metropolitan regions attract high-skilled and educated workers, and the fact that these metro areas are home not only to the largest populations of Latinos but also to some of the biggest cities in our nation could help explain the wage gaps described above. But how do U.S.-born Latinos and Whites in these regions compare in terms of educational attainment?

The figure below reveals that the share of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree (BA) in most of these regions is much higher than the national average for both U.S.-born Whites and U.S.-born Latinos. In four of the six regions, a greater share of U.S.-born Latinos has a bachelor’s degree compared to the national average of 18 percent for all U.S.-born Latinos. There is also considerable variation in educational attainment among the U.S.-born White population. Only in Riverside is the share of U.S.-born Whites with at least a BA smaller than the national average of 34 percent.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia shows that workers with and without college degrees tend to earn higher wages in larger cities, but college graduates experience a much faster growth in their median wages in big cities. The big-city factor might be one reason for these above-average wages.

Comparing the data on wages and education levels for U.S.-born Latinos from the charts above reveal how Miami’s U.S.-born Latinos tend to be highly educated yet do not earn particularly high wages, while Riverside’s U.S.-born Latinos are less educated and earn particularly high wages.

The poverty rate is similar for immigrant and U.S. born Latinos

While U.S.-born Latinos do better than immigrant Latinos when it comes to median wages and educational attainment, when you look at poverty (at the 100 percent of the federal poverty level threshold), you will see a different story. As the chart below illustrates, U.S.-born Latinos and Latino immigrants experience poverty at about the same rate—24 percent—compared with 10 percent for Whites. This suggests that U.S.-born Latinos are not better off than their immigrant counterparts when it comes to poverty, and, in fact, the unrounded numbers show that their poverty rates are actually slightly higher—24.4 percent versus 24.0 percent. When looking at 200 percent of poverty, however, the trend is similar to one we saw with wages and education: U.S.-born Latinos are less likely than Latino immigrants to fall below 200% of poverty (51 percent versus 57 percent). Still, the fact that U.S.-born Latinos experience deep poverty at the same rate as their immigrant counterparts is troubling.

One potential explanation for this could be that many U.S.-born Latinos belong to recent immigrant households whose socioeconomic status often has reverberating effects for their children and the generations that follow. Another possible explanation is that immigrant-headed households tend to be larger with more workers, raising their family-based poverty threshold while U.S.-born Latinos are more likely to be in smaller, nuclear families.

Inclusion and integration for the fastest growing community in the U.S.

The U.S. Latino community, the fastest growing group in the richest country on earth, should not be steeped in this magnitude of poverty. The astounding numbers of U.S.-born Latinos and Latino immigrants living under the poverty line underscore not only how great the challenges are to Latino immigrant integration and inclusion, but more shockingly how great the challenges are to achieving equity for their U.S.-born counterparts.

One starting point to address this lack of integration in the Latino community is to insure the children and youth within this community have access to quality education that could launch them on a positive trajectory to achieve economic success.

To learn more about how U.S.-born people and immigrants are faring in your community, go to the Indicators tab, select one of the eight equity indicators that have data by nativity (Wages: $15/hour, Unemployment, Homeownership, Wages: Median, Working poor, Poverty, Disconnected youth, or Education levels and job requirements), and click on the “By nativity” breakdown.

Webinar Archive: Explore New Data on Immigrants in the National Equity Atlas

 

The National Equity Atlas has added nativity cuts to eight economic indicators: the percent of workers earning at least $15/hour, median wages, unemployment, homeownership, education levels, disconnected youth, poverty, and working poor. 

To learn more, watch our “Explore New Data on Immigrants in the National Equity Atlas” webinar. Here is a link to the webinar recording and slides.

You can also find analyses of our new nativity data here, in the "Data In Action" section:

Also, please see our “Frequently Asked Questions” to learn more about the Atlas.

Here are some data resources on rural immigrant and tribal communities:                     

We also invite you to our next live webinar, 3 Ways to Use Equity Atlas Chart Downloads, scheduled for Thursday, September 1, 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm PT. We will be demonstrating three ways that you can use our improved chart downloads to advance equity locally.

Please feel free to contact us with any additional questions about the Atlas. You can write to Sarah Treuhaft at sarah@policylink.org.

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