Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan America (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-12
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PART I GOVER - - ~ c CE and OPPORTU STY in it.......
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The spatial distribution of inequality, and in particular the increasing isolation of low-income minority populations in central cities and inner suburbs, appears to be a result of mutually reinforcing efforts by working-class and middle class people to create living arrangements to their liking and by economic actors to locate their activities in a manner that furthers their specific interests. These efforts have become institutionalized in the fragmented, decentralized structures of metropolitan governance, and these structures in turn both exacerbate socioeconomic inequality and effectively stand in the way of policies that might ameliorate or reduce its extent and social costs.
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On average, the per capita income of central-city residents in the South and the West nearly matched that of their suburban counterparts. In the average metropolitan area in the Midwest and the Northeast, by contrast, the per capita income of central-city residents was just 76 and 65 percent, respectively, of that of suburban residents.
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Spatial Mismatch The spatial mismatch hypothesis states that there is a disjuncture between jobs that are increasingly found in the suburbs and potential qualified workers who are constrained to live, as a result of low income or housing segregation patterns or both, in central-city neighborhoods. Research, although not conclusive, suggests that a combination of barriers hinders central-city blacks and lesseducated whites from obtaining suburban jobs; these barriers include an absence of information on suburban job opportunities, greater hiring discrimination against
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Concentrated Poverty, Social Isolation, and Neighborhood Effects Other possible reasons why central-city residents have low employment rates relative to suburban residents are not necessarily related to distance but may nonetheless be related to location and metropolitan structure. One possible set of reasons relates to the social isolation of poor people, particularly blacks, in highpoverty neighborhoods.
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Tax/Service Disparities Socioeconomic segregation by jurisdiction in metropolitan areas routinely translates into tax and public service disparities. That is, jurisdictions with lower than average tax bases must impose higher tax rates or provide lower levels of public services than their more affluent neighbors.
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Local land use regulation and municipal incorporation efforts have been driven to a substantial extent by exclusionary impulses. And the system of local self-reliance has provided localities with a powerful fiscal incentive over and above social patterns of discrimination and preferences to exclude low- and moderate-income households, which typically consume public services costing a good deal more than they contribute in local tax payments.
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In addition to the economic cost of lower productivity and output, there are the social and economic costs of crime, the threat to personal security and social order inherent in a large disadvantaged population that feels it has been denied opportunities, and the long-term debilitating effect on the quality of American democracy, which depends on a well-socialized population with active commitment and participation from its diverse population groups. The higher unemployment rates and lower incomes resulting from unequal opportunity also impose greater public costs on all levels of government, through higher public expenditures on welfare, medical care, food stamps, social services, housing assistance, police protection, and prisons.
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· The effects of recent strategies to reduce inequalities in spatial opportunity structures, such as empowerment zones and community development corporations; worker mobility and reverse commuting programs; Gautreaux-type residential dispersion strategies; housing vouchers; and the equalization of educational expenditures. · Whether the extent of governmental fragmentation in metropolitan areas affects the degree of inequality of income or racial and economic segregation in those areas.
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In our judgment, more aggressive state government action is fundamental to reducing inequality of opportunity in metropolitan areas and to achieving prosperous metropolitan areas that are less racially and economically stratified. Local governments operate within a framework of state laws and regulations; the state is, after all, the locus of constitutional authority with respect to local governments.
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Three areas of particular importance are education improvement, providing access to suburban jobs, and reducing fiscal disparities.
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