March 20, 2010 · www.gothamgazette.com |
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- Judith Kurens on The Long Way Home
- Ellen Balleisen on Raising the Bar
- David King on Lock Down?
- Farah Akbar on Tourist Spot?
- Glenn Pasanen on Framing the Figures
Demographics Reports:
Opportunities for Public Housing Residents
This new report by the Pratt Center and the Brooklyn Community Foundation outlines strategies for creating and increasing opportunities for public housing residents to climb out of poverty. 2009-10-29
Escape from New York
The state has lost 1.5 million people or 8 percent of its population since 2000, according to a new report by the Empire Center, a part of the Manhattan Institute. According to "Empire State Exodus," New York lost more residents to other states than any other state during this period. Despite that, immigrants from other countries continued to come here, resulting in a slight increase in the state's population over the last eight years. 2009-10-28
Poverty in New York
More than 1.5 million New Yorkers -- and 25 percent of all city children -- lived in poverty last year, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. The total is down slightly from 2007, but represents a rise of 126,458 people from the year 2002. The coalition cautioned that the numbers do not reflect the full force of the economic downturn and do not include many homeless people who the Census Bureau did not count. 2009-09-30
State of the City's Housing and Neighborhoods
The 2008 State of the City’s Housing & Neighborhoods report by the Furman Center found that city investments into affordable housing in poor neighborhoods is more closely associated with limiting housing declines during a downturn than any other neighborhood characteristic. Overall, it found that predicting which neighborhoods will do well and which will fare poorly is difficult. 2009-03-13
Middle Class Squeeze
It is becoming increasingly difficult to afford a middle-class lifestyle in New York City, and as a result, people are leaving the five boroughs, according to a report released last week by the Center for an Urban Future. The report found that a middle-class lifestyle that costs $50,000 a year in Houston would cost $120,000 in Manhattan. New York's other boroughs are becoming almost as expensive, with Queens now the fifth most costly urban area to live in the United States. At least partly as a result, the city saw a net loss of 151,441 people in 2006. 2009-02-09
Aging in New York
Many older New Yorkers find New York City a great place to age because of its public transit, proximity of stores and other amenities, and wealth of activities, according to a new report by the New York Academy of Medicine, the City Council and the Bloomberg administration. However, the report said, these older New Yorkers also face an array of challenges, including age discrimination, the high cost of housing, finding information in their own language and physical access to many places. The number of New Yorkers over 65 is expected to increase by 45 percent by 2030. 2008-09-19
Violence Against Women
A new report by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found intimate partners commit a third of all violent incidents that cause female hospitalizations annually. About 44 percent of women who were killed between 2003 and 2005 were murdered by intimate partners, according to the report. The report also found the number of women reporting violent incidents to researchers and medical providers is increasing. 2008-09-09
Mapping Poverty
The 1.4 million New Yorkers living in poverty are concentrated in certain neighborhoods, according to "Mapping Poverty in New York City," a report by the Community Service Society and the United Way. Half the city’s poor people live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is at least 24.8 percent (compared to a citywide rate of 19.2 percent), and one quarter live in neighborhoods -- all in Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn -- where more than a third of the households have incomes below the poverty level. Using maps, the report looks at how poverty rates correlate with other factors, such as rent costs and educational attainment. 2008-04-14
Income Gap
New York has the widest gap between rich and poor of any state in the nation, according to a report released today by the Fiscal Policy Institute, and the difference is even larger in New York City. The top 20 percent of New Yorkers have incomes almost nine times that of New Yorkers in the lowest 20 percent. While rich New Yorkers got significantly more affluent in the last 20 years, those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder have seen their incomes remain fairly stagnant. 2008-04-09
New York's 'Mating Market'
In his everlasting quest to find what makes a great place live, Richard Florida, the author of Who's Your City, has created a map of the dating scenes across the country. The New York Metro region is the best place for single men, like the large cities and metro areas on the East Coast in general, according to Florida's research. But New York is an extreme example, with single women outnumbering single men by more than 210,000. Florida argues that a vibrant, balanced "mating market" is one of the keys to attracting residents. 2008-04-04
Firefighter Exam Results
The results for the written firefighter's exam were released yesterday, and the results are expected to translate into more female and minority hiring than ever before. 38 percent of test-takers to pass were minorities, with 19 percent of them Hispanic and 17 percent black. There was also a 50 percent increase of women passing the exam this year compared to the last time it was administered in 2002. "Of the 4,000 test-takers who scored the highest on the exam and are most likely to be appointed, 33 percent are minorities," the Fire Department release of the results said. To be included on the department's eligibility list, candidates must still pass the physical exam. This year's list will be used to appoint firefighters over the next four years, with about 600 per year being chosen. 2007-11-28
Phantom Constituents in the Empire State: Prison Population, Census Data, and Political Power
The report by the Prison Policy Initiative finds that 15 counties in New York, as well as the five that make up New York City, include inmate populations when they redistrict or apportion votes in local legislative bodies. In five of those counties, the inmate population was large enough in one or more districts to dilute the political power of residents in the others. Thirteen counties that have prisons exclude inmates when drawing district lines. 2007-08-07
Staten Island's Future
While Staten Island offers many opportunities, the city’s least populated borough also faces an array of challenges, according to “Staten Island 2020,” a report by the Center for an Urban Future. The problems include an exodus of young people, rapidly rising housing costs and ever-longer commuter times. 2007-04-25
Saving New York City's Middle Class
The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy conducted a survey of New York City’s leaders to find ways to strengthen and expand the city's middle class. While New York City’s median family income is $49,374 a year, those surveyed think that it actually takes $75,000 to $135,000 annually for a family of four to have a middle-class standard of living in New York. With near unanimity, respondents agree that it is harder to enter the middle class today then it was ten years ago. 2007-04-03
Room for More High School Students
A discrepancy exists between the Department of Education’s promises to increase the high school graduation rate and its plans for new and enlarged schools, according to a report by the office of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. The report, “Planning for Failure,” says that the department’s capital program calls for adding 26,000 new seats in city public high schools. This plan, according to the report, is based on projections that less than half of city public-school ninth graders will reach 12th grade. If the department meets its goal of boosting the four-year graduation rate to 70 percent, it will need almost twice as many places in high schools as it now has planned, the report concludes. 2007-03-14
NYC Future Population
The Department of City Planning (DCP) released population projections detailing the age and gender of the 9.1 million people expected to reside in New York City in the year 2030 with snap shots of the composition of each borough at five year intervals between 2000 and 2030. The projected increase from 2000’s record high population of 8 million is spread throughout the five boroughs with the largest numerical increase in Queens at 336,000 and the largest percent gain, 24.4 percent, in Staten Island. While projected changes in the numbers of school age children differ by borough, the city’s population will be older across the board with nearly 15 percent of the population over 65 in 2030, roughly the same share of the total population as the 5-17 age group. Nearly 400,000 of the city-wide population gain of 1.1 million will be 65 or over. The city median age will rise from 34.2 in 2000 to 37.4 in 2030 with each borough seeing marked increases in the number and share of residents age 65 and over. 2006-12-18
Health Profiles Of 42 NYC Neighborhoods
The New York City Department of Health And Mental Hygiene has released its "2006 New York City Community Health Profiles," which offers a look at the health of 42 neighborhoods, accessible by zip code, by borough, and by 10 major health issues. For example, the neighborhood with the largest percentage of obese residents is East New York, Brooklyn (31 percent); the small percentage of obese residents is on the Upper East Side and Gramercy (eight percent). Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca (which are grouped together) have among the lowest annual death rates in the city (a rate that decreased 20 percent over the past decade), but the highest rate of child lead poisoning in the city, and residents of these three neighborhoods were more than 60 percent more likely to engage in binge drinking in any given month than New Yorkers overall. 2006-10-31
Inheriting Jobs from the Baby Boom
Thousands of baby boomers are preparing to retire over the next few years in New York. Many of these work in key industries like construction and health care. In this report, the Center for an Urban Future discusses what it sees as a great employment opportunity for the city's 200,000 "disconnected youth", who are neither in school nor working. 2006-05-05
Work and Wages
Unemployment declined by more than two percentage points in New York City between 2003 and 2005. But according to a new report by the Community Service Society, problems still plague the job market here. For example, a smaller percentage of the city's working age population had a job in 2005 than in 2000, and real weekly earnings for middle- and low-wage workers dropped during that same period. According to report author Mark Levitan, this is because much of the growth in jobs has been in low-wage industries. 2006-03-22
Low-Income New Yorkers
Health care is the biggest worry for poor New Yorkers, according to “The Unheard Third,” the Community Service Society’s annual survey of low-income city residents. The report found that incidences of hardship, such as falling behind in the rent, increased greatly among poor New Yorkers this year, with 70 percent of the working poor having experienced three or more such difficulties, compared with 39 percent in last year’s survey. The society attributes this partly to the lack of health insurance among many poor New Yorkers. 2005-10-26
Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992
The number of immigrants to the United States each year, legally and illegally, grew very rapidly starting in the mid-1990s, hit a peak at the end of the decade, and then declined substantially after 2001. By 2004, the annual inflow of foreign-born persons was down 24 percent from its all-time high in 2000, according to this analysis of data by the Pew Hispanic Center. The immigration to New York City is the lowest it has been in 15 years, the report says. 2005-09-30
NYC: The Country's 21st Most Liberal City
According to a study released by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research, New York City is near the bottom of a list of the top 25 most liberal cities in America. Detroit, is the most liberal city in America and Provo, Utah, is the most conservative. 2005-08-24
Out of School, Out of Work... Out of Luck? New York City's Disconnected Youth
A new report released by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), a nonpartisan, not-for-profit, antipoverty organization, reveals that 16 percent of New York City's 16 through 24-year-olds are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market. 2005-01-21
