Rochester’s Broken School System Kent Gardner argues forcefully in the Rochester Beacon that Rochester’s school system is broken and in need of radical change. Gardner’s post highlights the efforts of a local organization, ROC the Future, to bring about reform of the city’s school system. Gardner is correct – students in the city’s schools do poorly compared to others […]
Left Behind: Characteristics of Low Labor Participation Counties In my last post, I examined labor market participation in New York State counties. I found that most New Yorkers, both upstate and downstate, live in counties where labor market participation differs only slightly from national levels, but upstate counties with small populations in many cases have labor participation rates that are significantly below the […]
The Income Gap between Men and Women: 2015 vs. 1970 Since 1970, inflation adjusted wage income growth has been almost nonexistent – only five percent over the 45 year period ending in 2015. Income change in metropolitan areas in New York State has differed little from the nation. Rochester and Buffalo were two exceptions – both had lower median real wage incomes in 2015 than in […]
The Persistent Gap Between White and Black Incomes in New York There has long been a substantial gap between the incomes of white Americans and those who describe themselves as African/American or black. As early as 1964, with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, the Federal and state Governments began passing laws aimed at preventing discrimination in the workplace. Has New York seen significant progress in reducing wage […]
Education, Age and Declines in Real Income Since 1970 The economic malaise that has affected small and medium sized rust belt cities since 2000 has been widely noted. Most have seen little or no real household income growth since then. Much of the weak performance has been associated with the long-term decline of manufacturing employment in the region – a trend that is largely […]
Response to Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity I’d like to thank Kay Wilkie, who serves on the United States Trade Representative’s Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee for offering useful comments concerning my post, “Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity” Kay points out that “It would be worthwhile to carefully examine and review the aspects of international trade and investment […]
Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity The decline in manufacturing employment in the United States has caused a wrenching economic adjustment, as one path to relatively well paying jobs has narrowed, particularly for workers without college educations. As the percentage of workers in our society who work in manufacturing industries decreases, and lower paying service employment has increased, wages have stagnated. […]
Poverty in Upstate Metropolitan Areas – Characteristics and Change: 1999-2013 A paper, based, in part, on data previously presented on this blog site. This paper examines the incidence of poverty in upstate New York cities, compared to the surrounding suburbs. The data shows that while residents of upstate suburbs enjoy incomes that are substantially higher than the national average, and poverty rates that are substantially […]
The Shrinking Middle Class in New York State – Cities and Suburbs Pew Research has been releasing a series of studies showing that the percentage of Americans who have middle class incomes has been declining. The most recent of these is America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas. The report received extensive coverage in many newspapers, including the New York Times. It concluded that […]
More on Race, Income and Student Achievement A few months ago, I wrote about the link between economic disadvantage and poor student performance. I looked at the performance of students on the State’s annual student assessment for grades 3 to 8, and found that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in schools and school districts accounted for about three quarters of the […]
