Today's Washington Post has a feature on the riots in D.C. that followed Martin Luther King's assassination. (A thousand people were injured in the violence, three were killed.) The feature looks at what has and hasn't changed in the city since the riots. One factoid caught caught my eye:
In 2006, the average white resident of D.C. earned nearly $65,000 annually, more than double the $27,141 (in constant dollars) they earned in 1968. Meanwhile, the median African-American resident's income in 2006 was $20,904--barely a bump up from the $18,410 (in constant dollars) earned in 40 years ago.
Its a bit of a misleading statistic as it doesn't include the mobility of the workforce. Between 1940 and the early 90s you had the white middle class moving out to the suburbs and in the 90s to the present day moving back into the cities. Whites still make up a smaller percentage of DC's population than African Americans and most have a high education degree.
From 68 to the present day you have the DC middle class African American population moving to areas such as Prince George's county. Hence a high proportion of the African American workforce in the 1960s included in the above stats came from the middle class, while in the 2006 statistic a higher percentage came from the poor/working class. If you looked at what salaries middle class African Americans receive between 68 and 06 I'm sure it would show a much bigger jump.
What it won't do is explain how to combat the abject poverty seen in many US cities, from DC to New Orleans, to LA.
Posted by: Paul Guinnessy | April 06, 2008 at 10:01 PM
Interesting, Paul. Thanks.
Posted by: Eric Umansky | April 07, 2008 at 11:27 AM