Recently, researchers Harvard and Brown, collaborating with the U.S. Census Bureau, have mapped the city of Chicago into incredibly small and detailed sections to illustrate the opportunity for upward mobility depending on where someone grew up. They called this the “Opportunity Atlas,” and the writers of this Chicago Tribune article reached a few conclusions from the data.
Firstly, and perhaps most relevant to the most recent readings we’ve discussed in class, is that there is a clear disparity between the percentage chance that a child who was born between 1978 and 1983 rose out of poverty between white and black children; a child raised in low-income black family “in the top 1 percent of tracts for mobility earned about $30,000 as adults on average, which is less than the $32,000 for whites born to poor families living in the worst 5 percent of tracts.”
Next, the article discussed how certain neighborhoods, particularly in the inner city, have poverty that is statistically nearly impossible to escape. This is shown by some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago continuing to be some of the poorest to this very day, while some people have moved out.
Another relevant takeaway is the lack of a positive effect on the local, poorer community in the Lincoln Park area, which has undergone gentrification. Although it has become one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation, according to the article, it has pushed out many poor families who have lived there for a long time, and the ones who stayed were not lifted out of poverty with the rest of the community who had moved in more recently.
The last pertinent takeaway to the course is how race, income, and place affect one’s chances of incarceration. As many know, across the country incarceration rates are significantly higher amongst black men than any other demographic group. In Cook County, where Chicago is located, 1 in 10 black males had been in prison at some point in their lives, as of 2010. This rate varies not only by race, but also by location within the Chicago area. Overall, however, this data does not attempt to demonstrate causation, but it certainly suggests that more research is deserved in studies like this.
This was a really fascinating article, but one thing I noticed that surprised me was the researcher’s hesitation to credit racism for the income disparities between black and white Chicago residents.
“The researchers’ findings regarding racial differences in mobility have received the most attention, leading Heckman to caution against using just one definition of upward mobility or assume that racism is at the heart of these differences.
‘It’s not just the income of the parent,” he said in an interview. “It has to do with a whole range of social and economic conditions including parenting, mother’s education, single-parent home.'”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding Heckman’s point, but I think these factors (social and economic conditions) are the product of institutional racism. I agree that the income of one’s parent is not the only factor determining how much money one will make later, but I find it surprising that Heckman does not think the other factors that effect one’s income could be connected to racist policies.
I believe that you’re correct with regard to race playing a key role in influencing these factors that determine how much money one will make later on, but I think you may be misunderstanding Heckman slightly. I don’t think he’s necessarily saying that race doesn’t influence these factors, but that this study does not analyze the causation between those factors and race. This study is more of a statistically evaluation that did not seek to delve into the reasons why these other factors exist, but rather what those factors cause. I hope that clears it up a little.