Segregation And Income Mobility

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/the-curse-of-segregation/392321/

School children waiting at the curb
theatlantic.com

Hello Everyone:

Before yours truly gets started on today's subject of segregation, Blogger would like to say hello to @savingplaces and @presonomics and thank them for follow yours truly on Twitter. Onward and upward.

Today we are going to look at the effects of segregation on the upward mobility of low-income children, with the help of Derek Thompson's ominously titled article for The Atlantic, "The Curse of Segregation."  Harvard University recently released two unfortunately timed papers that concluded,

...the income mobility for poor children in Baltimore City is worse than in any large county in America. (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org)  The study authors, Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren write,

 Every year spent in Baltimore "reduces a child's earnings by 0.7 percent per year, generating a total penalty of approximately 14 percent for children who grow up there from birth. (Ibid)

Blogger concurs with Mr. Thompson's comment that Baltimore does not need any more bad publicity.

Baltimore-area row houses
theatlantic.com

Derek Thompson writes, "Geography is not quite destiny.  But neighborhoods can dramatical shape the economic prospects of those who grow up there."  For example, one-hour south on the I-95 is Fairfax County, Virginia, "...one of the 10 best large counties for low-income children."  A child growing up in Fairfax for eighteen years can anticipate an 11 percent growth of household earnings by early adulthood.  Citing the studies, Mr. Thompson writes, "All else equal, the difference between growing up in Fairfax rather than Baltimore, these studies say, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars of lifetime earnings.  This is a huge difference.

The Harvard University Studies are neatly summarized in a series of New York Times articles (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility=shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?abt=002&abg=1).  The papers present one very clear result: "Some cities and neighborhoods keep their residents stuck in vicious cycles of poverty while others have a proven track record of turning poorer children into economic success stories.   (http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org)  One paper analyzed low-income families who received HOPE VI vouchers that moved families out of housing projects into counties that experienced less poverty, in a randomized study conducted in the 1990s.  Studies done over the past few years concluded that each year spent out of a poverty stricken area during childhood, increases a child's earnings in adulthood.

Fairfax, Virginia
smartgrowthamerica.org

In short, "...the value of moving to a county with high upward mobility is not just a matter of where, but also when: The earlier the move, the better the outcome."  What makes a desirable county or city? Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren list the following components of a good county or city: less income inequality, less violent crime, more two-parent households, less segregation by income, and less segregation by race. (Ibid)

The last two elements, segregation by income and race, are the most important because of the size of their impact and widening our understanding of segregation's long-term effect on children.  Messrs. Chetty and Hendren writes,

About 20 percent of the black-white income gap is explained solely by the differences in the counties in which black and white children grow up...But segregation is also bad for rich residents...since areas with higher degrees of segregation and inequality have negative impacts on children's earnings from above-median families. (Ibid)

In short, segregation is a deal with the devil-a reverse Robin Hood.

The Historic DuPage County Courthouse
Wheaton, Illinois
en.wikipedia.org

This past February, Alana Semuels, Derek Thompson's colleague at The Atlantic, reported a story about a successful voucher program in Chicago which helps African-American families move to traditionally Caucasian suburbs.  The city of Chicago is one of the United States's most multi-cultural cities, in terms of residents of color.  However, its African-American population is concentrated, that based on a neighborhood by neighborhood level, it is the most segregated city in America, this is according to Brown University's American Communities Project.  The majority of the residents would benefit from moving to a higher-income suburb-DuPage County, west of downtown Chicago.  DuPage County was singled out as the best large county for poor children.

Alana Semuels wrote that despite the scheme's success in Chicago, there are very few programs

that focus on helping African American families move from racially segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods to areas where their children will have access to good schools and less exposure to crime...Those that do exist are all the results of lawsuits.

In calculating the costs of moving from a city's worst neighborhood to its best, Messrs. Chetty and Hendren write,

twenty years of exposure to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as opposed to Baltimore for makes in below-median income families would increase their income by 44.7 percent.

Derek Thompson laments, "But here again the scars of segregation show.  Blacks account for more than 60 percent of the population of Baltimore City.  The national average is about 13 percent.  Bucks County, however, is just 4 percent."