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.

Latino Immigrants Face an Uphill Battle to Economic Inclusion

This blog post by Angel Ross was first published on the National Equity Atlas August 9, 2016.

Immigrants have been an integral part of the social, political, and economic fabric of this nation since its inception. But increasingly hostile local, state, and national policies and climates put many immigrants in precarious situations, restricting both their participation and potential, and ultimately hurting the economy as a whole.

In June, we released data on working poverty in the Atlas, and found the number of Latinos working full-time yet still struggling economically has increased steadily over the last three decades. Last week, we added breakdowns on immigrant status to eight Atlas indicators, including working poverty. This new data reveals the significant challenges of working poverty among Latino immigrants and the vast differences within the Latino immigrant and U.S.-born populations. For instance, nationwide Latino immigrants are twice as likely as U.S.-born Latinos to be working poor.

This analysis describes working poverty among Latino immigrants, examines the cities with the worst outcomes on this indicator, and highlights policies to support immigrant integration and ensure economic security.

Employed Latino immigrants have higher poverty rates than U.S.-born Latinos

One in four Latino immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 is working full-time but has a family income below 200% of the federal poverty level, compared with just 12 percent of U.S.-born Latinos. Mexican immigrants, who account for more than half of all Latino immigrants, have the highest overall rate of working poverty among Latinos at nearly 29 percent followed by Guatemalans (28 percent) and Hondurans (26 percent). 

Multiple factors contribute to these numbers. In addition to lower wages and lower levels of educational attainment on average, another important reason is that immigrants, half of whom are Latino, are less likely to be enrolled in public benefits programs. Poverty is calculated based on family income, which includes earnings as well as sources other than work like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Undocumented people are currently ineligible for many of these programs, but we see lower rates of enrollment even among eligible immigrant families. Increasing enrollment in these programs is one way to ease the burden that many low-income immigrant families face in the U.S.

Many immigrants are also part of mixed status families, which might include authorized immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and U.S. citizens. By 2010, close to a quarter of all children had at least one immigrant parent. But due to the precarious status of undocumented workers and discrimination against Latino immigrants, exploitation and wage theft is rampant.

The high rates of working poverty among working-age Latino immigrants translates into high levels of economic insecurity among Latino children, who are a large and growing segment of our future workforce. Nearly 63 percent of Latinos under 18 years old live below 200 percent of poverty as do two in three Latino children under 5 years old.

Where do Latino immigrants face the biggest barriers?

To better understand the geography of economic insecurity among Latino immigrants, we ranked the 100 largest cities in the U.S. by the rate of working poverty and the median wage among Latino immigrants. Because both citizenship and education are associated with higher earnings, we also looked at the citizenship rate and the percent without a high school diploma.

The cities with the highest levels of working poverty among Latino immigrants—with 38 to 40 percent of their Latino immigrants working poor—included the North Carolina cities of Winston-Salem and Greensboro, along with the Texas cities of Dallas and Irving, followed by Minneapolis, Minnesota. These cities also had lower median wages, lower levels of citizenship, and lower levels of educational attainment than Latino immigrants nationally. The national citizenship rate of all Latino immigrants, for example, is 30 percent and the median wage for full-time workers is $12.70/hour. Yet the citizenship rate among the five cities with the highest levels of working poverty ranged from 11 percent in Winston-Salem and Greensboro to 19 percent in Irving. The median wage ranged from $9.40/hour in Winston-Salem to $10.70/hour in Dallas. Similarly, just under half of Latino immigrants nationally lack a high school diploma, but that number goes as high as 68 percent in Dallas.

The cities with the lowest median wages among Latino immigrants—ranging from just $8.90/hour to $10.20/hour—are Raleigh and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Indianapolis, IN, Plano, TX, and Columbus, OH. Indianapolis has the third lowest median wage but a significantly lower rate of working poverty than other cities. The wage difference in Irving and Plano, Texas show the extent to which labor markets are truly local: the median wage is more than a dollar lower in Plano than in Irving or Dallas even though both are part of the Dallas metropolitan area and educational attainment is higher in Plano. Importantly, Latino immigrants as a whole account for a much smaller share of the total population in Plano than in Irving (7 percent in Plano versus 20 percent in Irving).

Winston-Salem, NC is the only city ranking both in the top five on working poverty and in the bottom five on median wages. With roughly 36,000 Latinos, 20,000 of whom are immigrants, Winston-Salem is home to the largest share of Latinos out of all big cities in North Carolina while neighboring Greensboro has one of the smallest shares of Latinos. Yet in both cities, Latino immigrants face significant barriers to economic inclusion. Four in ten Latino immigrants ages 25 to 64 in Winston-Salem and Greensboro are working poor and half earn less than $9.50/hour in Winston-Salem and $10/hour in Greensboro.

Latino immigrants in the capital of North Carolina at the heart of the Research Triangle (anchored by North Carolina State University, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) have the lowest median wage for full-time workers of the largest 100 cities and even the largest 150 metropolitan areas in the country. With more than half of Latino immigrants in Raleigh earning less than $9/hour, combining the income of two working parents still doesn’t add up to a living wage for a family of three or four. Latino immigrants are more than three times as likely as U.S.-born Latinos in Raleigh to be working poor.

Interestingly, the median wage of Latino immigrants in Durham, also in the Research Triangle, is nearly $3/hour higher than in Raleigh even though a higher percentage of Latino immigrants in Durham lack a HS diploma and the citizenship rates in both cities are nearly identical. The Latino population also accounts for roughly the same share of the population in both cities, but Durham is majority people of color and Raleigh is majority White. Despite the higher median wage, 29 percent of Latino immigrants in Durham are working poor.

Municipal IDs and the state preemption of local policies benefiting immigrants

The North Carolina economy relies on immigrant labor, but last year Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill banning local governments from establishing “sanctuary cities” and preventing government agencies from accepting local or foreign-issued IDs. The mayor of Greensboro viewed this legislation as targeted towards their local efforts to welcome immigrants with one of the first programs in the South that offered ID cards to immigrants. Law enforcement officials successfully pushed back last year and the law only bars city officials from accepting the ID cards, not police or hospitals.

But this year, new legislation was introduced in the state that would prohibit law enforcement from accepting municipal IDs. This law was passed in spite of evidence that local ID cards help to foster a sense of community among all residents and that law enforcement has actually solved more cases due to increased trust from the undocumented community. This type of state preemption to local authority is a threat to equitable development, but continues to gain momentum across the country, particularly in more conservative states, curbing the ability of local leaders to build inclusive and equitable cities.

Immigrant integration is a moral and economic imperative

In an increasingly hostile political environment, one promising strategy for immigrant integration is increasing naturalization. Not only does naturalization strengthen democracy through voter representation, it also results in economic gains. A recent study by our partners at the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration found that reducing the eligible to naturalize population by half over 5 years is estimated to result in a $75 billion gain to the national economy over ten years. Ending the criminalization of undocumented immigrants by providing a pathway to citizenship and increasing citizenship supports for authorized immigrants has benefits extending far beyond the immigrant population.

In additional to municipal ID cards, other state and local strategies include providing access to health care for undocumented people, as SB 10 did in California, and separating local policing from immigration enforcement as HB 13-1258 did in Colorado. Policies that contribute to the just and fair inclusion of those residents who are often left behind help to create thriving and sustainable communities. To learn more about these policies, visit our immigrant contribution to growth indicator.

To explore data on immigrants for your city, region or state, visit the National Equity Atlas. For more information on the nativity cuts, see our previous blog.

Pages