Thursday, May 14, 2015

Baltimore and bad social policy

Baltimore is no different from many other large US cities. Brookings highlights ten facts that show:

1/The city is relatively affluent
2/ The region boasts a significant black middle class
3/ Jobs pay better than the national average
4/There are significant numbers of jobs for downtown residents

5/ But there are high concentrations of poverty
6/ Poor areas are largely black
7/ Black residents fare much worse eg child poverty is 41% for black children compared to 13% for white

8/ But Baltimore's level of concentrated poverty is about average amongst US cities
9/ Its income inequality is similar to other big cities
10/ Many cities have blacks with worse poverty and unemployment (though Baltimore does rank fairly low)

The article concludes

In these respects, Baltimore is a typical American city. Its level of concentrated poverty is average among cities in major metropolitan areas. While Baltimore has a higher overall poverty rate than most other cities, its level of income inequality mirrors that for U.S. cities generally. And Baltimore’s depressing outcomes for black residents on poverty and employment are actually better than those in a majority of other cities with large black populations.
In sum, Baltimore is a region on the upswing economically, but one in which stability and prosperity are distributed highly unequally across racial and community lines. That is more or less the norm in metropolitan America today, and a stark challenge to economic growth patterns that have left too many behind for too long.

What Baltimore reflects is the sad state of the black family. The view expressed in a comment below the article isn't far off the mark:
 
The utterly predictable outcome of a policy that for 50 years has subsidized unwed motherhood while taxing traditional families.
Anyone who took and passed Econ 101 saw this coming.

The same outcome applies to every country that went down this road.  High rates of single parent families, child poverty and workless households.

(Note the difference in unemployment rates between white and black in Baltimore - 4.8% vs 11.3% - is very similar to NZ's unemployment rate differences: European 4.5%, Maori 12.6 percent and Pacific 12.5%).

2 comments:

JC said...

Brookings mangaed to miss a few hippos in the room..

Baltimore has a black mayor, a black chief of police and black cops are near enough 50:50 with whites.

Like the other cities it compares Baltimore to they are in the North East and one in California, strongly Democrat, losing population, suffer from white flight out of the citiy and black flight to the suburbs. These cities are also the most susceptible to riots.

For the most part it's decades of Democrat rule and corruption that seems to be the problem. Add in the race baiters like Obama, Sharpton and Holder and you get a rerun of the 1960s and 70s unrest in such places.

What is it.. 72% of black mothers are unwed in the US? Why wouldn't you expect such problems.

JC

Brendan McNeill said...

Good post Lindsay, thanks for highlighting it.