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2 Ghetto Poverty: Basic Questions
Pages 16-67

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From page 16...
... Despite intense interest in the topic, no consensus has emerged on such questions as how to define and measure ghettos, whether ghetto poverty has gotten worse, whether ghettos harm their residents, and what if anything public policy can do about the problem. One of the key reasons for this ongoing confusion is that several different concepts are being discussed simultaneously: · Persistent poverty individuals and families that remain poor for long periods of time and, perhaps, pass poverty on to their descendants.
From page 17...
... We set up a criterion for defining some neighborhoods as ghettos based on their level of poverty. We then identify ghetto neighborhoods in metropolitan areas and develop a summary measure for standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs)
From page 18...
... 1b reiterate, we are not defining or measuring the underclass. Instead, we are defining ghettos and counting the ghetto poor in all metropolitan areas in the United States.2 We ask several basic questions about ghetto poverty: How can the concept be operationalized so that it can be measured over time and across cities?
From page 19...
... However, we take an approach similar to Wilson's by using census tracts as our prosy for neighborhoods.4 We then create a summary measure for an SMSA based on the population in ghetto tracts.5 We define a ghetto as an area in which the overall census tract poverty rate is greater than 40 percent. We define the ghetto poor as those poor, 3 Massey and Denton (1988a)
From page 20...
... However, individual census tracts, especially near the boundaries of ghettos, may be misclassified (Coulton et al., 1990~. Nonetheless, we are convinced that the 40 percent poverty criterion appropriately identifies most ghetto neighborhoods.
From page 21...
... The 20 to 40 percent poverty areas are basically working class and lower middle income. In our visit to Philadelphia, the 40 percent census tracts looked and felt quite different, especially in North Philadelphia.
From page 22...
... .9 Each of these groups is divided into ghetto and nonghetto tracts on the basis of their poverty rates. Given that the overall proportion minority in the city is about 20 percent, the existence of many census tracts that are more than two-thirds minority indicates a high degree of racial segregation.
From page 23...
... Although outside appearances can be deceiving, cite and Census Bureau officials and other knowledgeable individuals generally confirmed our assessments. The Level of Ghetto Poverty Having set up a criterion for identifying neighborhoods (census tracts)
From page 24...
... Moreover, because our measure identifies specific tracts, we are able to map ghetto tracts and visually inspect their spatial relationships. The value of this approach will be evident below, especially in the section on "The Geography of Ghetto Poverty." Data Sources We have compiled data for all metropolitan census tracts (approximately 40,000)
From page 25...
... Second, the CPS uses the tract poverty rate from a previous decennial census until the next one becomes available. As a result, the tract poverty rates are attached to data that are as many as 10 or more years out of sync.
From page 26...
... Nonpoor neighborhoods, those with poverty rates of less than 20 percent, have just the opposite race/ethnicity composition. Non-Hispanic whites make up the vast majority of persons in nonpoor neighborhoods and only a small proportion of those in ghettos.~4 Family Structure and Demographics Family structure is also quite different in ghetto neighborhoods, as seen in Table 2-2.
From page 27...
... TABLE 2-2 Families by Type and Presence of Children: Memphis and Philadelphia SMSA Averages and Ghetto Neighborhoods, 1980 Memphis SMSA Philadelphia SMSA SMSA Ghetto SMSA Ghetto Total families Married-couple families With children Without children Single-parent families With children Without children Black families Mamed-couple families With children Without children 232,787 23,387 39.1% 36.4 14.7 9.8 21.1% 24.7 35.0 19.1 1,209,923 57,508 38.7% 20.1% 39.9 20.4 11.0 10.5 81,834 20,849 204,878 41,245 31.8% 23.1 39.6 20.0 19.5% 22.1 27.2% 24.2 15.9% 17.7 Single-parent families With children 29.2 38.1 30.1 44.3 Without children 15.9 20.3 18.6 22.1 As a result of this difference in family structure, a much greater proportion of the children in ghetto areas have only one parent. On average, children of single parents are poorer in terms of income and other resources.
From page 28...
... First, just by virtue of the area's being mostly black, the employment and wage rates for ghetto residents are lower than the SMSA averages. Second, controlling for race, ghetto residents are more often out of the labor force or unemployed.
From page 29...
... . ~ Employed 86.7% 63.6% 86.3%51.~% Unemployed 5.2 11.9 5.814.4 Not in labor force 8.1 24.5 7.933.8 Unemployment rate 5.7 15.8 6.321.8 Median earnings of full-year, full-hme adult male workers Proportion of households with income from Eamings Public assistance Blacks Males, aged 25-44 $16,067 $9,701 $18,933 $12,019 82.1% 60.3% 79.3% 52.6% 11.1 33.1 10.0 42.8 Employed 75.5 62.1 69.2 49.7 Unemployed 10.1 13.9 12.0 17.0 Not in labor force 14.3 24.1 18.8 33.3 Unemployment rate 11.8 18.3 14.8 25.5 Median earnings of full-year, full-time adult male workers Proportion of households with income from ua'Tlmgs Public assistance $11,195 $9,241 $13,916 $11,653 74.4% 59.0% 71.0% 50.5% 24.4 36.5 28.4 47.5 ghettos was about $5,700 per year.l6 This was well below the $7,421 that was needed in 1979 to support a family of four at the poverty line.
From page 30...
... This difference may reflect the socioeconomic level of ghetto residents, lower educational aspirations in ghetto neighborhoods, or the quality of education in ghetto schools. Whatever the reason, however, it clearly indicates the low levels of education among ghetto residents.
From page 31...
... for a discussion of the importance of considering the employment of black youths in the context of their school enrollment and military enlistment. 19The data are from Table PB49, "Age by School Enrollment, Years of School Completed and Labor Force Status," Summary Tape File 4^
From page 32...
... The total number of poor persons who lived in a metropolitan census tract in which the poverty rate was greater than 40 percent was 2.4 million. The number of poor, metropolitan poor, and ghetto poor, by race, is shown in Table 2-5.
From page 33...
... live in nonmetropolitan areas and that there are many pockets of poverty in rural areas, particularly among blacks in the South and Hispanics in Texas and Florida. Such areas are not usually divided into census tracts, so poverty rates cannot be calculated for them.
From page 34...
... Similarly, only 4.2 percent of the country's 479,000 Hispanic rural poor lived in counties in which the overall poverty rate was greater than 40 percent. ~enty-eight percent, however, lived in rural counties in which the Hispanic poverty rate is that high.
From page 35...
... . of SMSAs 1970 1980 Change Percent Change All races 3181,8912,449558 +29.5 Creases 1~77851,712927 +118.0 No change 44000 Decreases 881,106668-437 -39.6 New in 1980 79 -- 6767 Black 3181,2471,590343 Deceases 965581,121563 +100.9 No change 62000 Decreases 81689426-263 -38.1 New in 1980 79 -- 4242 Hispanic 318385534149 +38.7 Creases 11696361265 +277.6 No change 86000 Decreases 37289170-119 -41.6 New in 1980 79 -- 33 35 The number of black ghetto poor grew by 27 percent over the 10-year period and the number of Hispanic poor by 39 percent.25 The aggregate figures, however, are extremely misleading because they conceal a substantial amount of variation among metropolitan areas.
From page 36...
... The South contributes four of the metropolitan areas with the largest numbers of ghetto poor, the Northeast, three, the North Central, two, and the West one. Most of the 10 cities have large black populations, which account for most of the ghetto poor.
From page 37...
... Atlanta and Baltimore, unlike many other cities in the South, also had large increases. The eight northern cities on the list exhibit doubling and tripling of their ghetto poor populations.
From page 38...
... STANDARD METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA BLACK 1~\\~ HISPANIC 1~ NH WHITE/OTHER FIGURE 24 Increases in Number of Ghetto Poor, 1970-1980, by Race. o -2 4 -6 -8 to E CD it_ -~ o ." o ~ ~ o z z -1 2 -14 -1 6 -1 8 -20 -22 -24 -26 -28 _ Columbus (GA)
From page 39...
... 1 More than 1,000,000 56.6 53.8 45.462.9 39 The regional pattern is shown in Able 2-9, which also gives distributions by city size. Relative to all metropolitan poor, the ghetto poor in 1980 were more likely to live in the Northeast or North Central region and to live in large cities.27 A substantial majority were in central cities.
From page 40...
... . As with the changes in the number of ghetto poor, however, the aggregate levels conceal substantial variation.
From page 41...
... Ghetto Poverty and the SMSA Poverty Rate What accounts for this strong regional pattern? Many factors are potentially involved, including regional differences in racial and economic segregation, changes in the economic structure of metropolitan areas, and 30Appendix A provides data for individual cities, organized by region and size of the metropolitan area.
From page 42...
... Figure 2~ shows the change in the level of ghetto poverty among blacks plotted against the change in the black poverty rate between 1970 and 1980. Each point represents an SMSA, and the symbols indicate the region and size of the metropolitan area.32 Clearly, there is a strong relationship between the change in the black poverty rate and the change in the level of ghetto poverty.33 Moreover, most of the cities with decreases in poverty are southern cities, especially smaller southern cities.
From page 43...
... We also describe the population changes that took place in different areas of the city, as a way of beginning to understand the complicated process by which groups of census tracts remain, become, or stop being ghettos. Finally, we look across SMSAs at the relationship between the black poverty rate and ghetto poverty.34 Understanding Increases in Ghetto Poverty The level of ghetto poverty that we discuss here is the percentage of the black poor living in ghetto areas.35 This level could have risen between 1970 and 1980 in several different ways: 34we do not look at interregional migration, despite suggestive evidence of its importance in the previous section.
From page 44...
... The poor in those tracts were then added to the count of the ghetto poor. With no change in the poverty rate, and no movements by poor people, nonpoor people could have move out of mixed-income census tracts.
From page 45...
... The maps of the four cities show categories of census tracts, as follows: · Facts that were ghettos in 1970, divided into those that remained ghettos in 1980 and those that improved; Tracts that were mixed income (20 to 40 percent poor) in 1970 divided into those that had become ghettos by 1980 and those that had not; Tracts that were not poor (less than 20 percent)
From page 46...
... 46 INNER-CITY POVERTY IN TlIE UNITED STATES FIGURE 2-8 Memphis SMSA change in tract poverty, 1970-1980. FIGURE 2-9 Milwaukee SMSA change in tract poverty, 1970-1980.
From page 47...
... The Geographic Spread of the Ghetto The maps of the four cities and Table 2-12 show that the ghetto areas in three of the four cities expanded geographically. Even in Memphis, where the proportion of the poor living in high-poverty areas declined substantially, the number of ghetto tracts decreased by only two.
From page 48...
... To distinguish between the other two hypotheses that tracts became ghettos simply because of poverty rate changes or because the nonpoor moved out we look next at population movements. Movements from Ghetto and Mixed-Income Tracts Table 2-13 summarizes population changes between 1970 and 1980 in the 1970 ghetto and mixed-income areas.
From page 49...
... Appendix A shows the number of ghetto census tracts in 1970 and 1980. In almost all of the areas in which the level of ghetto poverty increased, and even in many areas in which it decreased, the ghetto area was spreading out geographically.
From page 50...
... Since each of these three cities had an increase in the black poverty rate, the increase in the number of black poor came from a change of poverty status among some blacks. Declines in the white population occurred among both poor and nonpoor.
From page 51...
... About half the ghetto poor lived in the Northeast or North Central regions, and another 40 percent lived in the South. The level of ghetto poverty varied greatly from city to city.
From page 52...
... Ghettos and m~xedincome neighborhoods generally had substantial decreases in population. In cities in which ghetto poverty increased, many new census tracts became ghettos.
From page 53...
... Government Printing Office. Census of Population and Housing, 1980: Census Tracts.
From page 54...
... 1987 The Random House Dictionary of the English Language.
From page 55...
... American Sociological Review 52 802~25. 1988a The dimensions of racial segregation.
From page 56...
... For example, imagine a census tract with 1,000 total persons, 980 whites and 20 blacks. The black data are suppressed (primary suppression)
From page 57...
... Suppose that the true rate for blacks is 50 percent, but after fixing complementary suppression the data include 10 percent whites with a 20 percent rate. We would then calculate a 47 percent rate for blacks in the census tract; not correcting for suppression would result in no data for blacks for the tract.
From page 58...
... We included these SMSAs in the 1980 data. These SMSAs were typically small and had few ghetto poor.
From page 62...
... =[ ~= ~ ~ ~ ~ °m °$ ° ~°° ~ 1 ~ ~ G z 11 o of *


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