In “Newt’s War on Poor Children,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow looks at the data to scrutinize presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s statements about children and poverty.  He takes on Gingrich’s recent claim that, “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

Blow disputes this argument and cites data and analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge:

This statement isn’t only cruel and, broadly speaking, incorrect, it’s mind-numbingly tone-deaf at a time when poverty is rising in this country. He comes across as a callous Dickensian character in his attitude toward America’s most vulnerable — our poor children. This is the kind of statement that shines light on the soul of a man and shows how dark it is.

Furthermore, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty — defined here as a household with income less than 50 percent of the poverty level — a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas — those in which 30 percent or more of the population is poor — nearly a third live with at least one working parent.

The article also includes a graphic “Poor Children, Working Families” based on analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from Andrew Beveridge.

After the article appeared Beveridge conducted further analysis, and it turns out that the a child’s neighborhood has little effect on the percent with working parents, anyone working in the household or the kids working themselves.  (Those data are only available for 15 to 17 year olds.)

Looking at parents or anyone working in the household for kids in extreme poverty, the percentages are 34.5 percent for those with at least one parent working and 37.4 percent for those with any person 18 and over working in the household.  Among the kids themselves, some 10.9 percent are working.

It is poverty itself, not the neighborhood, that mostly shapes these results.  For instance, while 33.3 percent of those in extreme poverty in neighborhoods with at least 30 percent of population in poverty have someone in the household who is working, in those neighborhoods with poverty rates of less than 10 percent in poverty the figure is 40.2 percent.

Despite the fact that many of the poor live in single parent families and are on public assistance, this analysis shows that a substantial number of poor families are in fact working.  They do not fit the common stereotype that neither their parents or anyone else the household works.

Read the full article here.

In the article “Incumbent Protection Program,” The Capitol’s Jon Lentz investigates the latest on redistricting negotiations in New York State.  The Legislature and the Governor have discussed reform proposals but not yet implemented them.

In the looming showdown over redistricting, Senate Republicans have struggled to keep the upper hand.

The GOP conference has delayed an independent commission by a decade, challenged a law banning prison gerrymandering and made other moves designed to preserve their narrow majority.

But under the radar, Assembly Democrats are pushing to keep control over the process too.

The article cites Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge in the discussion of the incentives at play in resisting reform:

It’s not much of a surprise Assembly Democrats have not pushed for an independent process, several redistricting experts said. Even though they already have a sizable majority, they still have strong incentives to maintain control of the redistricting process and keep it out of the courts or, much less likely, an independent commission.

“If you go and draw it clean, you don’t have incumbency protection,” said Andrew Beveridge, a Queens College professor and redistricting expert. “Whereas if you started from scratch, which a commission would do, a lot of people would be at risk.”

The uncertainty of the process is probably what concerns Assembly Democrats the most, he added.

“That’s probably why they’re scared of it,” Beveridge said. “You wouldn’t know which one would be at risk.”

For more on redistricting from Andrew Beveridge, check out his testimony at the State Legislature and Gotham Gazette article about the issue.

With the Occupy Wall Street protest bringing attention to “the other 99 percent,” the spotlight has also turned to the wealthiest Americans.  In the New York Times article “As the Data Show, There’s a Reason the Wall Street Protesters Chose New York,” Sam Roberts explains that “the megarich hold more of the nation’s wealth and collect more of the overall income today than at any time since right before the Great Depression.”  He cites Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge:

Certainly, the protesters picked the right city in which to start their campaign. Among the 1 percent of American households with the highest income, a significant portion, 13 percent, live in the New York metropolitan area, with 4.4 percent living in Manhattan, according to an analysis by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College. In three Manhattan neighborhoods, the Upper East and Upper West Sides and Greenwich Village, more than 11 percent of the households make enough to qualify for the top 1 percent.

The related article “Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds,” details findings by the Congressional Budget Office about gains made by the country’s top earners.

Social Explorer tools and resources allow for further examination of the most affluent Americans.  From unpublished detailed American Community Survey (ACS) data for the years 2005-2009 (not yet available in Social Explorer), the top 1 percent of households earned at least $394,600, compared to no more  $12,282 for the bottom 10 percent or no more than $132,836 for the bottom 90%.  (These figures are adjusted to 2010 dollars.)

With the current state of the economy, it is likely that the latest data will show a decline in these numbers.  Still, the super-affluent are much, much richer than the quite well off.

The published tables in the ACS provide detailed annual data on income for the top 5 percent of earners.  Using the ACS data already available in Social Explorer, we examined this elite population in the US, New York City, Manhattan and Washington, DC.  (All income figures adjusted to 2010 dollars.)

The census recently started blocking certain detailed data on the income threshold for top income earner when that threshold was more than $250,001.  However, we can still look at the mean income of this group both before and after the recession.

A graph of this data shows the strong earning power in the borough of Manhattan, as well as the impact of the recession.  Nationwide, mean income for the top five percent remained relatively stable, while in Manhattan it experienced bigger ups and downs.

Mean Income for Top 5 Percent of Earners

Using Social Explorer’s maps, users can also see where high earners live.

Manhattan Map of Households Earning Over $200,000 per year (2005-09 American Community Survey)

Click around the map to learn more about high earners in New York City and across the country.

For more on the bottom of the 99 percent, read the recent New York Times articles on the nation’s poorest community and the county that suffered the most since the recession (both cited Social Explorer data and analysis).

The recent release of the 2010 census data offers new information about the impact of the recession around the country.  In the article “Reading, Pa., Knew It Was Poor. Now It Knows Just How Poor,” Sabrina Tavernise explores widespread poverty in Reading, PA:

a struggling city of 88,000 that has earned the unwelcome distinction of having the largest share of its residents living in poverty, barely edging out Flint, Mich., according to new Census Bureau data. The count includes only cities with populations of 65,000 or more, and has a margin of error that makes it difficult to declare a winner — or, perhaps more to the point, a loser.

Reading began the last decade at No. 32. But it broke into the top 10 in 2007, joining other places known for their high rates of poverty like Flint, Camden, N.J., and Brownsville, Tex., according to an analysis of the data for The New York Times by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College.

The article reveals that:

• The city’s poverty rate is now 41.3 percent (edging out Flint, MI)
• The employment rate in Reading dropped by 10 percent from 2000 to 2010
• Only about 63 percent of Reading’s residents have a high school diploma, compared with more than 85 percent nationally.  (For a further discussion of education and income, check out Social Explorer’s Back to School series.)

A chart of the most impoverished cities accompanies the article (based on data from Andrew Beveridge and the Census Bureau).

Click here for the full article on poverty in Reading, PA.  You can explore the 2010 data yourself using Social Explorer’s report tools.

Today’s release of the 2010 census data offers new information about the impact of the recession.  Also, these new data will be available to Social Explorer users later this month.

In the New York Times article “Data Show County’s Pain as Economy Plummeted,” Sabrina Tavernise reported on the hardest hit area in the nation–Greenwood County, South Carolina–citing data and analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge.

The falloff of the economy of Greenwood County, a district of almost 70,000 people that once pulsed with busy factories and mills, was the steepest in the country by two counts.

According to an analysis of Census Bureau figures made public on Thursday, its poverty rate more than doubled to 24 percent from 2007 to 2010, the largest increase for any county in the nation.

The decline also engulfed the middle class. Median household income plunged by 28 percent over the same period, shaving nearly $12,000 off the annual earnings of families here during the recession, according to the analysis, by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College.

Read the full story about the local effects of the recession here.

Additionally, nationwide maps of increases in poverty and decreases in median income accompany the article.  The maps use data and analysis from Social Explorer and the Census Bureau.

Click here to see how different parts of the nation fared after the recession.

A recent New York Times article “Steps Away but Worlds Apart in New York” by Gina Bellafante explores the stark contrasts between poverty and privilege in New York City, often within the same neighborhood, or even street.

For decades, the intersection of Park Avenue and 96th Street has remained one of the city’s most obvious and despairing emblems of disparity, with East Harlem and its challenges spreading out to the north, and a vast gridlock of extraordinary privilege colonizing the acreage below. It is worth debating whether a visit to this corner ought to be mandated for tourists; few spots so profoundly render the truths of New York’s economic extremism. Liberal parents hoping to foster their own political values in their children might consider pilgrimages. When I stood there, as a teenager, for the first time in the early 1980s, I felt a call to fierce and equalizing justice, ready, suddenly, for Latin American guerrilla work and the Red Brigades…

With Social Explorer, you can dig deeper into neighborhoods across the city to learn more about wealth, poverty and other demographics over the decades.  These maps of this Upper East Side neighborhood illustrate the divide along the 96th Street.  The first one depicts median income (the darker shading indicates higher median incomes), and the second one depicts poverty rates.

Income and Poverty on Manhattan’s Upper East Side

(Both maps use 2005-09 American Community Survey data at the census tract level)

Click around to view other variables and neighborhoods.

And, coming soon to Social Explorer, you’ll be able to explore the latest data with the soon to be released 2010 numbers for the Census and the American Community Survey.

In his latest Gotham Gazette column “10 Years Later: Enumerating the Loss at Ground Zero,” Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge examines the changing demographics of the Trade Center area, and the economic performance of the city a decade after 9/11.

The direct losses to New York and the United States from the World Trade Center attack are incalculable when one considers the personal and emotional loss to family and friends of the victims, as well as to all other New Yorkers, who have contended with the specter of 9/11 during the past decade. Yet, the magnitude of the losses and especially the recovery are being calculated daily…

First, Beveridge describes who the victims were:

Given the firms for whom many of those in the World Trade Center worked, as well as the large number of firefighters and other rescue workers, the other demographic facts should not be that surprising. The victims were overwhelmingly male (about 75 percent), young (many under 40, most under 50) and white (about 75 percent). Only about 8 percent were black, 9 percent Hispanic and about six percent Asian. About 75 percent were born in the United States, and the others originated from many different countries. Together New York and New Jersey residents accounted for about 87 percent of the victims. Many of the airplane passengers came from Boston and California.

Beveridge goes on to detail the scope of the economic losses and the status of the neighborhood and sector today:

Altogether, the 1,294 companies paid about $3.9 billion (all figures are in 2009 dollars) in wages and salaries, averaging about $126,000 per employee, far higher than the average for the New York metro salary of about $69,300 per employee. Few other ZIP codes and none outside of the Financial District rivaled the World Trade Center in generating employment income per employee. Most of the stores, restaurants and other retail establishments paid high rent to be in the trade center. Sandwich shops and other establishments, where less well-off employees worked, were mostly “just” across the street in another ZIP code.  Lower Manhattan accounted for about 3 percent of the employment and over 5 percent of the earnings in the large New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania Metropolitan area, which extends to Montauk at the tip of Long Island in one direction and to Hope County, Pa., in the other. The finance sector accounted for about 9.2 percent of the employment in the entire region, but 19.2 percent of the wages paid in the New York metropolitan area in 2000.

For instance, once the financial center of the world, Manhattan no longer accounts for over half of all employment in the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector:

Though Lower Manhattan seems to have recovered in terms of employment if not in terms of income, the financial sector in Manhattan seems to have taken a blow from which it has yet to recover. When the financial sector in Manhattan is compared to financial sector in the entire metropolitan area it is plain that some of its jobs have moved away from Manhattan. The sector in this larger region showed some decline to 2005 and then a small increase to 2009. In 2000, Manhattan accounted for 50.7 percent of the employment in finance in the wider metropolitan area. By 2005 that percentage had declined to 46.6 percent, and by 2009 it dropped further to 44.0 percent.

Among his conclusions, Beveridge states that “It seems Manhattan has permanently lost a substantial share of the financial sector.”

To read the full article, please visit GothamGazette.com. For Beveridge’s 2002 article on the same zip code, visit the archived article here.

In the New York Times article “A Rocking Chair Called Manhattan,” Constance Rosenblum examines the growth of New York City’s elderly population and the city’s appeal to older residents.  The story includes data from Social Explorer and analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge.

• Over 460,000 residents age 75 and over live in NYC, making up 5.6 percent of the city’s population.
• Nearly 100,000 of them live in Manhattan, where they account for 6.2 percent of the population.

Moreover, their numbers are poised to explode. Starting in January, when the first of the baby boom generation began turning 65, a boomer has reached that milestone every eight seconds.

The lingering effects of the recession and the increasing appeal of the city have combined to persuade many older New Yorkers to stay put, avoiding the financial, psychological and logistical costs of uprooting themselves.

“We tend to think of Manhattan as a city largely of the young and middle-aged, but that’s not strictly accurate,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a professor of sociology at Queens College. “When it comes to old folks, New York is full of them. Their presence undercuts the notion that everyone goes to Florida.”

Of the 10 census tracts in Manhattan with the greatest percentage of residents 75 and older (upward of 9 percent), 6 lie east or west of Central Park. From the white-brick buildings on the East Side to the stately prewars of the West Side, both areas are rich in apartment houses with elevators, doormen and a profusion of neighbors, all prized by this population. Single women, who make up the majority, appreciate the generally safe streets.

For more on older New Yorkers, naturally occurring retirement communities, rent stabilization, roommate trends and government and local programs for the elderly, check out the full article.

Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge explains where detailed demographic data comes from in his latest Gotham Gazette column “Under a New Name, Census Data Stands Ready for Perusal.”

The 2010 census has been rolling out since February with New York state getting the first of its data on March 24 and more data releases during the summer. Yet, almost every day reporters, redistricting specialists and even other demographers ask when data to answer questions such as the following will be released:

• When will we know the number of immigrants in New York City and in various neighborhoods throughout the city?
• How many Hispanic citizens of voting age live in Washington Heights?
• Has the median income in Jackson Heights grown or declined since 2000?
• How many veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars live in Staten Island? In the Bronx? On the Upper West Side?
• Which recent college graduates are ending up with jobs? How much do they make? How many are living at home with their parents?
• Has the number of people working in finance increased?

The answer is simple and surprising: “All the information you need was already released on Dec. 14 last year.”

As you may recall, the census form you filled out last spring had just a few basic questions. So the data released on the basis of that can only include: number of people, dwelling owned with or without a mortgage or rented with or without cash rent, relationship to householder, sex, age, and race or races, including principal tribe or group, if Native-American, Asian or Pacific Islander. The other data — indeed the data that in many ways is the most interesting and heavily used — comes from the American Community Survey, or ACS, which is actually “the rest of the census” and was released in December.

Beveridge writes about the development, content and frequency of the ACS, and the differences between it and the old Census long form, which it replaced.

Beginning in 2005, the Census Bureau began to collect data for the American Community Survey, which is very similar to the old long form. That survey gets responses from about 2 million households and residents of group quarters (prison, dormitory, institution) every year, and tracks the same sort of data that was produced by the long form sample. The survey takes place all year and interviews, where necessary, are conducted by permanent staff — not the temporary workers who interview for decennial census.

Data from the annual survey are released in one-year, three-year and five-year files (with increasing levels of detail).  The multi-year files offer the most detailed data, but also cover the longest period of time.  For instance the five-year file includes data both before and after the financial crisis of ‘07-’08.

Beveridge also discusses flaws with the Census Bureau’s handling of sampling errors (resulting in potentially negative population counts) and the bureau’s policies on suppressing certain data.  A memo Beveridge wrote to the Census Bureau on the topic of their estimation of confidence intervals and its misuse, along with the agency’s response is available here.

Though not as well known as the Decennial Census, the ACS offers a wealth of demographic information and is available right now.

In sum, despite some differences between the American Community Survey and the old census long form data, the survey is in most ways superior. Not only is the data released more often and in a more timely fashion, but the numbers may be more accurate since the survey is conducted by a permanent interview staff. So the next time you cannot find the data you want in the census report look for it in the American Community Survey.

Click here for the full column. Social Explorer subscribers can access ACS data anytime through maps and reports.

While many parts of upstate New York are experiencing population losses, some areas of the Hudson Valley are growing.  New York Times journalist Peter Applebome writes about the shift and the people behind it in “Williamsburg on the Hudson,” which also includes demographic data from Social Explorer.

Call it the Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley, the steady hipness creep with its locavore cuisine, its Williamsburgian bars, its Gyrotonic exercise, feng shui consultants and deep clay art therapy and, most of all, its recent arrivals from New York City…

The migration north began with the weekender incursions in the ’80s and ’90s, gained a more urgent and permanent tone after 9/11, stumbled during the real estate bust and is now finding its way again. But, for all the images of upstate decay, the population of the Hudson Valley is growing more than twice as fast as that of the rest of the state — 5.8 percent over the past decade, compared with 2.1 percent for New York State and New York City. (While there are no universally accepted boundaries to the Hudson Valley, this reference includes the counties north of suburban Rockland and Westchester and south of the capital region: Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia and Greene.)

Click here for the full story of the area’s history, transformation, newcomers and employment outlook.