Tag Archives: inequality

Glaeser argues “desegregation is unsung US success story”

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Residential segregation is a persistent feature of American life (a few earlier posts here, here, and here). Yet, economist Edward Glaeser argues that things are improving on this front:

As the figure shows, as of 1970, almost 80 percent of either whites or blacks would have had to move neighborhoods in order to achieve an even distribution of whites and blacks within the average metropolitan area. By 1990, that dissimilarity measure had dropped to 66 percent; it is 54 percent today. We are very far from living in a perfectly integrated society, but our nation is far more integrated than it was 40 years ago.

The progress over the last decade has been particularly dramatic. Every one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas experienced drops in both dissimilarity and isolation of 3.6 points or more. The isolation index is below 45 percent in every one of those 10 largest areas, except for Chicago. Long among the most segregated places in America, the Windy City has experienced a particularly dramatic decline in segregation since 2000.

The general decline in segregation has also been accompanied by a change in its nature. Before 1968, segregation is best understood as the result of hard, if often informal, barriers against black mobility. There were neighborhoods that were simply off-limits. The effect was that blacks paid more for housing, especially in more segregated cities…

After 1970, however, that pricing pattern switched. By 1990, blacks were paying less for housing than whites, especially in more segregated metropolitan areas. This switch can be explained if segregation, post-1970, reflects white preferences rather than barriers preventing black mobility. If the segregation that remains is the result of whites liking to live in primarily white neighborhoods, then we should expect whites to pay a price for limiting their own choices, and that is exactly what the data show.

The decline in segregation hasn’t been uniform across the black population. Much of the decline reflects relatively well- educated black Americans moving into white districts. While that freedom is something to celebrate, the exodus of the more skilled left many urban neighborhoods behind, and the effect of growing up in a segregated community appears to have gotten worse over time.

A few things to note here:

1. Glaeser ends by suggesting this is a triumph for everyone. While the numbers overall may have improved, there is still a lot of work to do – as he notes, cities like Chicago still have higher levels of segregation and only certain segments of the black population have had the options to move to whiter areas. On one hand, you want to celebrate progress but on the other hand, you don’t want to minimize the fact that this is still a major issue. The issue of where people (can) live is tied to a lot of other concerns including school performance, wealth, and life chances.

2. Glaeser suggests the change in recent decades is due to white preferences rather than the presence of real barriers. Two thoughts on this:

a. Really? There are no barriers for lower-income or non-white residents to move into wealthier areas? Why do we still then have cases about exclusionary zoning (such as an example in Westchester County)? Why there are still big debates about constructing affordable housing (an example from Winnetka, Illinois)?

b. Glaeser seems to suggest these white preferences are okay since they pay for this privilege. This is the appropriate penalty for essentially restricting the abilities of others to live in certain places? I bet a lot of sociologists might have some complaints about this – this is the key difference between de jure and de facto segregation and both have negative outcomes.

Another story on Glaeser’s study has a response from a sociologist who suggests some caution:

“We’re nowhere near the end of segregation,” says Brown University sociologist John Logan, who was not involved in the study. “There are still no signs of whites moving into what were previously all-minority neighborhoods, and there is still considerable white abandonment of mixed areas.”

3. Glaeser also seems to be only looking at the black/white divide in where people live, the widest measure. I would be interested to hear his explanations for the differences between whites and other groups.

Find the social mobility of the American Dream in Canada

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One analysis of social mobility in Canada suggests the American Dream can be found north of the border:

Yes, the U.S. is richer, but it’s also significantly more unequal, and a lot less mobile. Inequality is inherited, much like hair and eye colour.

The conclusion is based partly on the work of University of Ottawa professor Miles Corak, a social policy economist and former director of family and labour research at Statistics Canada…

“What distinguishes the two countries is what’s happening at the tails,” Prof. Corak explained in an interview. “Rich kids grow up to be rich adults and poor kids stay poor. In Canada, that’s not so much the case.”…

But it’s a country of extremes, and life is good if you’re at the top in the United States. A child’s chance of staying at the wealth pinnacle is much greater than in Canada.

While I’m sure people will bring up some important differences between the United States and Canada including a much bigger population in the US plus a different history of immigration, this is still interesting. One of the primary ideas of the American Dream is that anyone can get ahead if they work hard and take advantage of the opportunities in front of them or that they create. Recent research suggests this is not as available to American citizens as the popular image might have people believe. Moving from the bottom to the top is actually rare and a lot of people are simply stuck in place.

It would be interesting to hear politicians talk in more depth about this. One common answer is to help American students go to college as the degree will help compete in the new information economy. But then we get into questions into who should pay for this college education and how schools before college need to be improved so that students are prepared for college. Job training programs are another popular answer though I’m not sure they are helping a large number of Americans. Are there other, better answers or is this a minefield a lot of politicians would try to avoid outside of platitudes about helping people reach the American Dream? Could a politician even cite this recent research about limited mobility without being vilified?

Just asking: is there a “Canadian Dream” that is similar to the “American Dream”?

The transformation of MLK from controversial figure to national hero

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While Martin Luther King, Jr. may now be revered as an important American, this wasn’t the case not so long ago:

The man himself was controversial, notes LaSalle University sociology professor Charles Gallagher. King — bound up with issues of racial and economic inequality that spotlight America’s worst sins — is a “Rorschach test,” Gallagher says, that people see in King what they want to see…

Part of the problem, says Gallagher, ironically lies in the progress of the African-American community since the heyday of the civil rights movement. The black middle class has grown, black culture is more mainstream, and the United States even has a black (or, as some would emphasize, biracial) president now.

“A lot of white America, if you look at the survey data, have come to believe that the goals of the civil rights movement have been achieved,” he said.

And yet it wasn’t so long ago that even the prospect of a Martin Luther King Day engendered protests. The first bill to create a federal holiday failed in 1979; it took corporate activism and a “Happy Birthday” song from Stevie Wonder to raise its public profile. It was signed into law in 1983 and first observed in 1986 — though not every state went along with the idea. A late-’80s move by Arizona to rescind the holiday cost the state the 1993 Super Bowl.

This does not strike me as unusual: historical figures often get reduced to more specific narratives over time. In the United States, there is the sanitary King found in public settings, a man who wanted equality for all and who often is reduced to a few speeches or images. This King succeeded in the eyes of many Americans, raising basic questions about equality and leading to new laws that ended the Jim Crow era.

Then there is the real King, a real person with strengths and weaknesses who said a lot of challenging things. This King had great moments but also many struggles. Reading King’s big speeches, several of which can be found here, and writings is a worthwhile task that I would guess few Americans have undertaken. These words are still challenging today as we face questions about race and ethnicity, discrimination, and inequality. Additionally, King’s Christian foundation is a challenge in a nation where Christians are the largest religious group and might prefer to debate Tim Tebow’s outspokenness about his faith than consider the bigger problems we face.

“Startling” number of “near poor” in the United States

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The Census Bureau released figures recently showing a growing number of Americans living below the poverty line. But the figures also showed a population increase in another group: the “near poor.”

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it…

The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau’s number crunchers by surprise.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”…

Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.

It would be interesting to know more about this group of “near poor”: is this a consistent position they hold in society? Is there much downward or upward  mobility from this group? Is this a group that grows dramatically in tough economic times for the whole country? The story makes it sound like this is a group that could easily go either way: a better job opportunity might push a household upward while a large medical bill or the need to replace an aging car might push them back much closer to the poverty line. And after knowing more, what policies would help improve the lot of this group – jobs, education, a bigger safety net?

I wonder additionally how much of this story is really that Census Bureau researchers are “surprised” by these findings. This is what the headline emphasizes. “Surprised” suggests that no one saw this coming. Should they have been surprised? After all, the median household income in the United States is around $50,000, suggesting that there are lots of people not too far from the official poverty line. Past context is important here to know how much larger this group is now compared to past time periods.

Increasing gap in wealth between older and younger generations in America

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It isn’t too surprising that older Americans have more wealth than younger Americans but perhaps the bigger story is that this gap has increased in recent decades:

The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984, when the Census Bureau first began measuring wealth broken down by age. The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.

The analysis in the story suggests that this growing gap is indicative of tougher economic conditions brought about by difficulties in finding a job, the delaying of marriage, growing college debt, and less of an ability to purchase a home when younger.

I wonder how this gap might translate into social or political action. Older Americans are well known for their relatively high voting turnout compared to younger Americans who are more fickle. Would younger Americans vote consistently about down-the-road issues like the national debt, Social Security, and other things they may be several decades from personally experiencing? Is this less consistent voting behavior among younger Americans the reason that there aren’t more safety nets for younger adults? Are Millennials, and not “Walmart Moms,” the next major voting bloc to emerge?

How much of this should raise concern about the economic welfare of younger Americans now or should we be more worried about how this later, rougher start in life will lead to less wealthy Americans (with its impact on American society) decades down the road?

It would be interesting to tie this to information about the demographics of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Media reports have tended to portray many of the protestors as college students or just our of college – how true is this? In public support for the movement, how much is based in the younger ages versus older demographics (who might support the Tea Party more?)?

David Brooks: blue inequality versus red inequality (exemplified by places like Naperville)

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David Brooks approaches inequality in America a little differently than the 1% vs. 99% of Occupy Wall Street. He suggests that there are two big kinds of inequality and the suburban/smaller city kind is more important:

In the first place, there is what you might call Blue Inequality. This is the kind experienced in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Houston and the District of Columbia. In these places, you see the top 1 percent of earners zooming upward, amassing more income and wealth…

Then there is what you might call Red Inequality. This is the kind experienced in Scranton, Des Moines, Naperville, Macon, Fresno, and almost everywhere else. In these places, the crucial inequality is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. It’s between those with a college degree and those without. Over the past several decades, the economic benefits of education have steadily risen. In 1979, the average college graduate made 38 percent more than the average high school graduate, according to the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. Now the average college graduate makes more than 75 percent more.

Moreover, college graduates have become good at passing down advantages to their children. If you are born with parents who are college graduates, your odds of getting through college are excellent. If you are born to high school grads, your odds are terrible…

[Compared to the attention paid to the wealthiest 1%], the fact is that Red Inequality is much more important. The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.

Interesting analysis. Some quick thoughts:

1. Though I didn’t quote it above, Brooks argues further that getting mad at the 1% is easier than dealing with issues like family and education that affect so many people. Brooks is probably right here. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people shouldn’t be upset about the top 1%  but Brooks is suggesting they could do much more good focusing on the bigger, yet more difficult to deal with, issues.

2. Is Brooks dealing with the same kind of concerns expressed in the Moynihan Report that was vilified for years?

3. If Brooks thinks that college is the answer, I’d be interested to see his plan of action in order to pay for all of this and provide the educations necessary to getting to a college experience. Brooks is not alone in suggesting college is the answer but this is not an easy plan to accomplish either.

4. It is interesting that Naperville is mentioned among other Red State cities. Naperville is located in a clearly Republican county (though the Republican lead isn’t what it used to be) but is also in a state that consistently has gone Democratic in recent years. Additionally, Naperville is wealthier than the other cities Brooks lumps it in with: the median household income is just over $100,00o in a city of over 140,000 people . Within these red states, Naperville would be a good example of a place that has thrived with college educated residents with many of them working in professional or high-tech positions either in Naperville or nearby suburbs.

New Census data on income inequality by state, metro areas

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Based on American Community Survey data from 2005 and 2009 and working on the assumption that “Spatial income inequality is neither intrinsically bad nor good,” the Census has a new report on income inequality. Here are some of the findings:

The report, by Daniel H. Weinberg, analyzed income data at various geographical levels and found that the region encompassing New York, northern New Jersey, Long Island and parts of Pennsylvania had the highest income inequality of any large metro area.

New York State also has the highest income inequality of all 50 states (although Washington, D.C., was worse).

Below is a map showing three measures of income inequality for each state: the Gini index (which ranges from 0.0, when all households have equal shares of income, to 1.0, when one household has all the income and the rest has none); a ratio of household income at the 90th percentile to that at the 10th percentile; and a ratio of household income at the 95th percentile to that at the 20th…

After New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have among the most unequal income distributions. At the low end are New Hampshire, Alaska and Utah, which is the most economically homogenous state in the nation.

The states that are above the US averages are an interesting group: Texas, New York, and California (tied to larger populations?) but also Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. Table 8 and 9 of the report have correlations and regression coefficients to look at the relationship of inequality measures to demographic characteristics. (Intriguingly, the regression is a stepwise regression analysis.)

Of more local interest: Illinois is lower than the US averages on two of the three measures and Chicago has a very similar Gini Index to the US average. And of places with more than 100,000 people, Elgin, Illinois has the lowest Gini Index value.

Here is part of the conclusion of the report:

This paper has shown that low income inequality at the neighborhood level is most likely a result of income sorting. In other words, it may be that higher-income households, when they can, choose to live away from lower-income ones, sometimes forming “enclaves” with little income variation. Alternatively, it may be that developers concentrate higher-end houses in certain tracts and those can be afforded only by households of higher incomes.

This uses more neutral language of sorting but we could probably tie this to larger processes of residential segregation: those with money (with wealth related to race) have the opportunity to live in their own communities and leave everyone else behind.

It will be interesting to see how this report gets spun by Occupy Wall Street supporters and those opposed and in the ongoing presidential race.

Is America caught between democratic inclusion and economic stratification?

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Here is an interesting discussion topic: America’s ability to weave/meld new people groups into the democratic process seems inversely related to America’s ability to have more economic equality.

It’s a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world…

European countries have done a better job of protecting workers’ salaries and rights but have been reluctant to extend the benefits of their generous welfare state to new immigrants who look and act differently from them. Could America’s lost enthusiasm for income redistribution and progressive taxation be in part a reaction to sharing resources with traditionally excluded groups?

“I do think there is a trade-off between inclusion and equality,” said Gary Becker, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a Nobel laureate. “I think if you are a German worker you are better off than your American equivalent, but if you are an immigrant, you are better off in the U.S.”

I often bring this up in my introduction to sociology course: while the United States has a less than pretty racial and discriminatory history (and there is still much to do), the scale of inclusion in the United States (in a country of roughly 310 million people) is remarkable, particularly compared to some of the issues European countries face.

In the end, does this have to be a zero sum game? Is there a country in the world that has successfully done both of these things? Is there a system that can accomplish both?

And getting into the territory of values and morality, which of these outcomes is more worthwhile if you could only have one?

John Malone: Largest US landowner with 2.2 million acres

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I’ve never seen a list of the biggest landowners in the United States until now:

According to the newly released 2011 Land Report 100, which ranks the top land barons, John Malone is now America’s biggest individual landowner. The 70-year-old cable pioneer and chairman of Liberty Media now owns 2.2 million acres, after purchasing more than 1 million acres of timberland in Maine and New Hampshire earlier this year.

The purchase, which drew fire from plenty of environmentalists in New England, vaulted him past the longtime number one, Mr. Turner, who owns slightly more than 2 million acres. Mr. Malone and Mr. Turner are longtime friends and fellow cowboy-hat wearers from the cable world…

Mr. Malone told the Land Report that his love of land is due to his Irish genes. “A certain land hunger comes from being denied property ownership for so many generations.”…

Some might worry that Mr. Malone’s purchase may ease America back to its more feudal days when the rich owned most of the land. Environmentalists fret about an era of “Kingdom Buyers.” Others may see them as the most responsible long-term stewards. Either way, the wealthy are likely to continue looking at large tracts of land as the safest long-term, hard assets at a time of extreme market volatility and low borrowing costs.

Can there be a new cultural value of “land hoarding”?

According to the Land Report 100, it doesn’t sound like Malone wants to ruin the land:

Malone is an ardent conservationist, an ethic he shares with Turner. While the duo’s ends are the same, their means differ somewhat. “I tend to be more willing to admit that human beings aren’t going away,” Malone says. His 2011 Maine and New Hampshire purchase, which was brokered by LandVest’s Timberland Division, saw him acquire robust sustainable forestry operations from private equity firm GMO Renewable Resources. He intends to keep them in place. He applies this philosophy to his western properties, such as the Bell, where he raises cattle and horses. Ultimately, he plans to put all of his land in perpetual conservation easements.

Here is the top 20:

  1. John Malone
  2. Ted Turner
  3. Archie Aldis Emmerson
  4. Brad Kelley
  5. Irving Family
  6. Singleton Family
  7. King Ranch Heirs
  8. Pingree Heirs
  9. Reed Family
  10. Stan Kroenke
  11. Ford Family
  12. Lykes Bros. Heirs
  13. Briscoe Family
  14. W.T. Waggoner Estate
  15. Holland Ware
  16. D.M. O’Connor Heirs
  17. Drummond Family
  18. Phillip Anschutz
  19. J.R. Simplot Heirs
  20. Robert Earl Holding

In terms of land comparisons, these 2.2 million acres are significantly more than Rhode Island and more than Delaware.

If some of the American public has thoughts about people having too much money, are there similar thoughts about people having too much land? Obviously, it takes some money to have this much land: John Malone has a net worth of $4.5 billion and is #69 on the Forbes 400 list. How much is this land worth?

In order to deal with issues like health, don’t focus on race but place and residential segregation

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Researchers examined health in two Baltimore neighborhoods and argue that it is not race that leads to different health outcomes but rather the places themselves:

LaVeist and several colleagues tested this idea by examining the counterfactual: If society weren’t segregated, would health disparities still exist? They identified a low-income community in Southwest Baltimore, spanning two census tracts, that is fairly equally divided between black and white residents (out of deference to the neighborhood, LaVeist doesn’t name it). The median household income in the area was less than $25,000 during the 2000 census. It has no pharmacy, no practicing physicians or dentists, no supermarkets, and no banks.

Within this integrated community, the researchers found that health disparities all but disappear. There was no significant difference in diabetes rates, or obesity rates among young women (a metric on which large gaps exist nationally). There did remain a difference in hypertension rates, albeit it a much narrower one than national data shows. The lone exception: Whites in this community smoked at a significantly higher rate than blacks.

This suggests that what the national statistics are really telling us is that minorities live in much higher numbers in unhealthy neighborhoods. And that means that in trying to address health disparities nationally, we’ve been looking for the answers to the wrong question. We should be asking what’s going on in these communities, not what’s going on within minority populations.

“Solutions to health disparities are likely to be found in broader societal policy and policy that is not necessarily what we would think of as health policy,” LaVeist says. “It’s housing policy, zoning policy, it’s policy that shapes the characteristics of communities.”

While this sounds like interesting research (though it only covers two neighborhoods?), haven’t sociologists been talking about this for years? In fact, Massey and Denton made just this point in American Apartheid back in the early 1990s:

Our research indicates that racial residential segregation is the principal structural feature of American society responsible for the perpetuation of urban poverty and represents a primary cause of racial inequality in the United States.

If as a country we really wanted to deal with disparities in education, jobs, opportunities, health, and more, then the problem of residential segregation is the one that needs to be tackled. Local decisions about zoning and resource allocation also matter. Simply dealing with the health concerns without addressing the whole neighborhood can only get us so far.