It such an accepted fact that the 1990's were a boom time in New York City that some New Yorkers are looking back at the decade with something close to wistfulness. But emerging data suggests that the truth is more complicated -- that the income for the middle class actually dropped in the metropolitan region.
At first glance, the boom seems indisputable. Between 1990 and 1999, personal income in New York City grew from 182 to 278 billion dollars; the average income per capita in New York City went from about $24,895 to $37,453. Even taking into account inflation the growth is still a very healthy 20 percent.
But both the Census Supplementary Survey and estimates based upon the Census's Current Population Survey provide grim news for New York. The Current Population Survey's estimates reported that the median income dropped in all five boroughs between 1989 to 1998. The estimated decline ranged from about $8,500 in Queens to about $3,100 in the Bronx.
How are both sets of figures possible, one showing greater affluence, the other a decline in income?
Looking at each of the five boroughs, the following stark fact becomes plain: The growth was in Manhattan, where the average income grew from about $61,000 to $82,000. boroughs. But the Census 2000 Supplementary Study suggests a decline in the other boroughs. Unfortunately, the survey did not question enough respondents so that reliable quantitative estimates can be made. But we will soon know what it suggests is true.
To understand how much total income there is one only need consult aggregate statistics. Such statistics show very healthy income growth in New York City. To figure out who earned the income requires data based upon surveys. Such data is much harder to come by. The census only occurs once every 10 years. It provides detailed income data by small geographic area. Other Census Surveys, the Current Population Survey, the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, the American Housing Survey do provide income data, but not for small areas. Because sample sizes in such surveys are small, the level of geographic detail is not great.
We now await the Census 2000 income data. Given the scattered results from other data, it seems very likely that the much heralded boom of the 1990s mostly helped the rich and very rich who live in Manhattan and other places with high concentrations of the affluent. The mythical "person or household in the middle" who receives the median income undoubtedly lost ground. If the poor made any gains, they were dwarfed by the gain of those at the top. In the same way that many companies have been restating their earnings in the wake of Enron, when Census 2000 finally releases the economic data for persons and households we may find that we must "restate the 1990s."
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and provides expert testimony on a range of cases, including housing discrimination. The opinions expressed are his alone.
For all its reputation for diversity and tolerance, New York City remains among the most segregated areas of the United States. The pattern of segregation was set in the city as far back as 1910, when one can already see the beginning of black settlement in Harlem, Southeast Queens andBedford-Stuyvesant. By 2000, these areas had become the centers of black population.
The separation of the races is of course not legally enforced in the city and, unlike the South, it never was. Indeed, New York officially welcomed many new black residents during the ñGreat Migrationî from the South. In 1910, there were about 91,000 African-Americans in New York City, or about two percent of the population of the city. By 2000, the figure had risen to 2.1 million, or about 27 percent.
But the metropolitan region of which New York City is a part is now the fourth most segregated in the United States, edging out Chicago. There are few signs that this will ever change.
Measures of segregation were developed in the 1940's and 1950's to understand the concentration of blacks in the "slums and ghettos" of major cities including New York City. At first, segregation only concerned blacks and whites. The most popular measure of segregation for demographers (the Dissimilarity Index or D)is simply the proportion of either group (black or white) that must move to make the proportion of each group identical in every census tract. (There are about 4,000 people in every census tract. In the year 2000, the United States Bureau of the Census divided New York City into 2,217 tracts). If no one must move, there is perfect integration and the index value is 0.00. If all members of one group must move then the index value is 1.00, and the groups are completely segregated, with all the blacks in one set of tracts, and all the whites in another.
Today, the D index of black-white segregation in New York City is 0.75. In 1910, it was 0.64. In other words, the city is more segregated now than it was in 1910. Since 1930, though the black population has grown steadily, the D index has remained more or less the same -- at least 0.75 in every decade, and for two decades exceeding 0.80.
Some express surprise that with such a massive increase in the black population there seems to be so little change in the pattern of black-white segregation. Many whites notice that blacks now live in their neighborhoods. Yet there are census tracts in Middle Village in Queens and in Bensonhurst in Brooklyn where not a single black person resides.
Some things have changed. Demographers have developed two other measures of segregation, what we call exposure and isolation. If all the tracts in New York City were like the handful with no black people, the exposure measure would be 0.00 for whites,and the isolation measure would be 1.00.
In 1910 (see graphic), the exposure index for whites to blacks was about 0.02, while for blacks to whites it was about 0.82. In other words, for the average black person, about 82 percent of the residents in his or her census tract were white, while for the average white person only about two percent of the residents of his or her tract were black. The white isolation index was 0.98, while the black isolation index was 0.82. Blacks were much less isolated and more exposed to whites than whites were to blacks.
By 2000 (see graphic), white isolation and black isolation were just about the same, at 0.66 and 0.62 respectively. The exposure level of whites to blacks had grown to 0.10, while that of blacks to whites had dropped to 0.17. By 2000, whites had a few more blacks in their neighborhood, while blacks had many fewer whites in theirs.
During the 20th century, New York City developed a very deep-seated pattern of segregation of blacks from whites and whites from blacks. It continues into the 21st century.
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and provides expert testimony on a range of cases, including housing discrimination. The opinions expressed are his alone.
Recently, the United States Bureau of the Census posted without fanfare a new report that estimates the number of "unauthorized and quasi-legal migrants" Ăś people born overseas who have settled in the United States without permission from the U.S. government. In 1990, the census researchers had found that there were about 3.8 million of these non-legal immigrants present in the United States. In 2000, this number zoomed to 8.7 million. Assuming an undercount, there could be as many as 10.2 million. At the same time, the number of foreign-born as a whole increased in the United States from 19.8 million to about 30 million. This means that the proportion of all foreign-born in the United States who are not legal residents rose from about 20 percent to 28 percent.
At least one million non-legal immigrants make their home in the New York metropolitan area; as many as half of them may have arrived over the past decade, though it is probably less. The anti-immigration oriented Center for Immigration Studies http://www.cis.org/ sent out their own press release about this public report with the title "Census Bureau: Over 100,000 Illegal Aliens from the Middle East". The inflammatory headline undercut the most interesting information presented. The report finds that 3.9 million or about 44 percent of the "unauthorized and quasi-legal migrants" are from Mexico, with about four percent from the former USSR and El Salvador. As to the Middle East according to the report, both Iran and Israel supplied 30,000 non-legal immigrants. It does not present a figure for any other Middle Eastern country. Instead, all of them, including all of the Arab states and Afghanistan, were lumped together as the Other Mid-east, which all together produced 59,000 non-legal immigrants. (The Census says that in the future they may send out their own press releases when they issue new reports).
The metropolitan area in the last decade had an increase in the total number of foreign born, legal or non-legal, of about one million - from 3.6 million to 4.6 million, according to another recent report based upon a yearly Census survey, (available in pdf format) but most were probably not non-legal. The countries that supply large numbers of non-legal immigrants are not highly represented in New York. For instance, Russia, China, India, Korea and Jamaica and the Dominican Republic supply relatively few non-legal migrants.
Statistical Adjustment and "Hot" Decks
The United States Census Bureau continues to resist making an adjustment to the census to account for a failure to make an accurate count of all people living in the U.S. The bureau's decisions and a long-standing bureau procedure are now under legal attack. First, a group of Congressmen sued in California and a group of state legislators in Oregon and both won the right to have the adjusted data released. The Census Bureau is appealing. Congress members sued based upon an obscure law that gives rights to such information to seven Congress members on a committee if they are in a minority so there is a chance the Congress members will prevail. Second, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case concerning the legality of the bureau's long-standing procedure of estimating data when they know a household exists, but for whom they have no answer to the Census questions. The so-called "hot deck" procedure often used to create such data fills in the missing information by using the responses from the last responding household on the same block. The bureau has used the hot-deck procedure method at least since 1940.
The release of much of the new interesting data from the long form, such as income, occupation, education, place of birth, commuting, housing condition, marital status, etc. seems to be delayed and may not be available until early summer.
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and provides expert testimony on a range of cases, including housing discrimination. The opinions expressed are his alone.