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ECONOMIC HARDSHIP, POVERTY, AND THE CHALLENGES OF LOW-WAGE WORK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Maps and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Table of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Executive Summary and Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Data and Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Crisis Assistance Ministry – A Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Population Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Income and Wealth Disparity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Concentrating Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

The Economy, Labor Force and Low-Wage Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

APPENDIX: Additional Figures and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

1NC POVERTY RESEARCH FUND

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TABLE OF MAPS AND TABLES

Map 1 Poverty by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Map 2 Poverty by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Map 3 Percent black and Hispanic by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2000 . . . . . . . . . . 28

Map 4 Percent black and Hispanic by census tract, Mecklenburg

County, 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Map 5 School “report card” grade and poverty rate by census tract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Table 1 Economically distressed census tracts in North Carolina (ranked by urban area and most distressed overall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Table 2 Industries with largest employment gains, 1994-2014 . . . . . . . . . . .36

Table 3 Average monthly earnings by industrial sector and race . . . . . . . . .36

Table 4 Occupations with largest projected employment growth . . . . . . . . .38

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TABLE OF FIGURESFigure 1: Median age by race/ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Figure 2: Percent of population by race/ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Figure 3: Change in population by race/ethnicity, 1980-2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Figure 4: Percent of households by household type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 5: Percent of households by household type, white and African American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 6: African American population of Charlotte by age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Figure 7: Percent of population with bachelor’s degree or higher by race/ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Figure 8: Four-year cohort graduation rate, 2014-2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Figure 9: Percent change in average household income by quintile, Mecklenburg County . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Figure 10: Average household income by quintile and 95th percentile, Mecklenburg County and North Carolina, 1990-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Figure 11: Median household income, 1980-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Figure 12: Percent of households by income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Figure 13: Percent of black households by income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Figure 14: Percent of white households by income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Figure 15: Median household income by race/ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Figure 16: Median earnings by race/ethnicity and sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Figure 17: Median earnings by sex and educational attainment, Mecklenburg County . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Figure 18: Median household income by household type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Figure 19: Poverty rate, 1970-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Figure 20: Poverty rate for all people, children and seniors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Figure 21: Poverty rate by race/ethnicity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Figure 22: Child poverty rate by race/ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Figure 23: Poverty rate by age and sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Figure 24: Percent chance that a child raised in one quintile will move to another quintile, Mecklenburg County . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Figure 25: Unemployment rate, 1990-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Figure 26: Labor force participation rate, 1970-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Figure 27: Employment to population ratio, 1970-2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Figure 28: Employment by industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Figure 29: Employment by occupation, Mecklenburg County . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Figure 30: Occupational employment by wage tier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3NC POVERTY RESEARCH FUND

CHARLOTTE:

NC POVERTY RESEARCH FUND

Executive Summary and Introduction

At fi rst glance, Charlotte may seem an odd choice for a study of economic distress in North Carolina. Charlotte is, on most fronts, an economic powerhouse. It can boast one of the

state’s highest per capita personal income levels and, likely, its greatest accumulations of wealth. It is North Carolina’s largest city. A massive fi nancial and energy center, it is home to the Carolina Panthers, the NBA Hornets, NASCAR, strong colleges and universities, vast and imposing medical centers, a bevy of Fortune 500 companies, one of the country’s busiest airports, and a congenial system of light rail. It is stocked with surprisingly impressive galleries and museums. The symphony is fi rst rate. It places well on lists of America’s best cities. It enjoys an outsized sense of civic pride.

Mecklenburg County, which Charlotte sprawls across, is home to 13% of all the private establishments in North Carolina and 16% of the state’s private sector jobs.1 The gross regional product of the greater metro area (over $131 billion in 2014) is 30% of the equivalent North Carolina gross product.2 Per capita personal income in Mecklenburg is 125% of that of the state; and is the 4th highest, after the affl uent Triangle area (Orange, Wake and Chatham counties) in North Carolina.3

Its job growth and relative wealth have attracted new residents at a prolifi c pace. One of the fastest growing large cities in the country,4 the number of people who call Charlotte home increased by 10% between 2010 and 2014, more than twice the statewide average.5 Charlotte is the 17th largest city in the United States by population.6 Mecklenburg County crossed the million-person mark in 2014 and contains over 10% of North Carolina’s total population.7

Yet a more searching examination reveals splintering fault lines beneath Charlotte’s often-gleaming surface. Racial and economic divides attest to the reality that Charlotte’s enviable growth is not widely shared. Warning signs have been documented in a series of national studies, some of which have been covered widely by local media, and have led to the formation of an impressive Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force in response to the varied challenges. An array of reports by the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford economist, Raj Chetty, revealing intense economic mobility concerns; an Urban Institute analysis of the availability of affordable housing; a recent Brookings Institute measure of economic inclusion and an earlier Brookings study on concentrated poverty have all cast a critical light on Charlotte.8 It is to the city’s credit that these revelations have elicited both self-exploration and initial responsive actions by civic leaders.

A dive into demographic and economic data confi rms both Charlotte’s economic prowess and its shortcomings. Charlotte’s economy generates tremendous prosperity. But the tangled confl uence of poverty, racial disparity, segregation in housing and education, neighborhood disadvantage, wage segmentation, and other forces have relegated many residents to the sidelines. If unchecked, such trends will imperil the Queen City’s long-term growth. Gaps by race are especially worrisome as they appear in multiple reinforcing and

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interlocking guises that accumulate over time. Mushrooming levels of poverty, concentrated poverty, segregation, income inequality, labor force polarization, and a shortage of affordable housing threaten to bolster and entrench Charlotte’s noted economic mobility challenges. A racialized, concentrating poverty has led to the creation of some of North Carolina’s most intense pockets of economic distress in the state’s most commercially vibrant city. Inequality in educational opportunity and housing access have followed. In the last decade, signifi cant labor market fragmentation—with the disappearance of much middle-income employment—threatens to make highly disparate patterns of community and opportunity even more rigid.

No single measure, of course, can be proposed to successfully combat such worrisome challenges. The troubling vectors merge. Mobility, inequality, segregation and poverty cannot be effectively separated. They are the joined cousins of economic injustice. Fostering equity and inclusion can boost opportunities for individuals, strengthen communities, and build more vibrant, encompassing economies. In a city of immense economic prowess and noted civic pride, economic deprivation of such magnitude and intensity presents a potent and haunting moral question as well.

Data and Methods

Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are closely identifi ed. The two local governments are intertwined, the city and county share a school system (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools), Charlotte contains 80% of the county population.9 Yet differences exist between the city and outlying suburbs and towns. When it’s available we often use data from both geographies as comparison and to provide a more complete regional picture. In the interest of brevity, when indicators are similar, we refer to one or the other, but not both. Occasionally, we refer

5

They don’t want to help you when you’re in crisis – child care, food stamps, and stuff. But they also don’t want to pay you enough that you can get by without those things either. I think they do it on purpose, to leave you trapped. We’re made to feel like we don’t count. No matter how hard we work, we can’t get ahead. Everything we get, everything our kids get, is the worst. I’m angry about it. We work as hard as the folks in the offi ces do, even harder. They get rich off of the work we do. I want to ask them, ‘why don’t you pay us a wage we might be able to live on?’ You make plenty of money to do that. ‘Why don’t you care whether the people who work for you can have a life if they work hard and do right by you?’ You know you can’t make food and

rent and transportation and electricity and day care on eight or nine dollars an hour.

I work hard. I do a good job and I’m responsible. But I’ve gone for years without a raise. I want a life like other people do. I want a chance to get ahead. Maybe, just for a minute, to enjoy life a little. And all you people talk about being so religious all the time. Where’s the Christianity in this? What’s decent about it? If you feel so responsible to your shareholders, why don’t you feel any responsibility to the people who work for you? Why don’t we matter? Why won’t you pay us a wage we can live on?”

- Cynthia L.Low-wage worker, Charlotte, NCVolunteer, Crisis AssistanceMinistry

“

CHARLOTTE:


to the Charlotte metropolitan area or the Charlotte commuting zone when these are the geographies used by other studies. These areas include surrounding counties in both South and North Carolina that are tied together by population and economy.

This report relies on multiple quantitative and qualitative sources to examine Charlotte’s signposts of economic hardship and challenge. Much of the demographic and socioeconomic data comes from the US Census Bureau, primarily through public-use versions of the American Community Survey (ACS) and historical decennial censuses. The ACS is a rolling survey with new samples collected every month. It is released on a one-year and fi ve-year basis. A multiyear ACS contains data from each year and represents the entire period. The most recent one-year estimates are more current but fi ve-year estimates are more reliable, especially where smaller geographies or populations are concerned, so we turn to them more often. For consistency, we adopt the racial and ethnic categories employed by the US Census Bureau. We also use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis for regional economic measures. Throughout this report we refer to and are informed by other academic and policy studies.

This report incorporates, as well, extensive narrative testimony gathered by the authors in partnership with colleagues at Crisis Assistance Ministry in Charlotte, an immensely effective and essential social services agency working with distressed low-income Charlotteans for over twenty-fi ve years. Interviews with clients, volunteers, and service providers at Crisis Assistance Ministry help add fl esh and substance to what can, otherwise, be bloodless and tiresome poverty statistics. We are grateful, particularly, for the support of Raquel Lynch, Daniel Valdez and Carol Hardison at Crisis Assistance Ministry. Any mistakes, and all recommendations that follow, however, are those of the authors and the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the support of the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund and, particularly in this Charlotte study, for the generous assistance of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. The A.J. Fletcher Foundation has also provided signifi cant funding for our examinations of poverty in individual North Carolina communities. The Triangle Community Foundation and a surprising number of generous foundation and individual donors have also supported our efforts. We are grateful to Allison De Marco for editorial assistance and to Poverty Center associates and students Joe Polich, Rory Fleming and John Gibson for important research contributions. Finally, we are thankful to former law school dean Jack Boger for supporting our North Carolina poverty research and publication efforts.

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Crisis Assistance Ministry – A Preface

Charlotte’s intense poverty is invisible to most. A VISTA member, working with some of the city’s most economically distressed residents, told us recently that, on a trip to a clinic, a local doctor asked what she did for a living. When she reported working for the poverty-fi ghting program, he said, “that can’t be, there’s no poverty here… I’ve lived in Charlotte all my life, if there was poverty, I’d have seen it.”

The under-informed doctor would, no doubt, be surprised by the statistics described in this report. He would also be taken aback to arrive any weekday morning, at about fi ve o’clock, at the offi ces of Crisis Assistance Ministry, located on the edge of uptown Charlotte. There, in the shadow of the city’s great banking towers, roughly 150-200 economically pressed residents line up daily, hoping to avoid the ravages of eviction and homelessness. Crisis Assistance Ministry was founded in 1975 by generous local churches, pooling their over-stretched charitable resources to meet “the needs of low income families in fi nancial crisis in Mecklenburg County.”

The Ministry runs a massive distribution center for clothing and housewares and a furniture and appliance operation—providing essentials of life free of charge for those living in or near poverty. For over two decades, it has also operated as a central hub of Mecklenburg County and United Way emergency fi nancial assistance efforts, relying on local, state, federal and private funds to try to help stem the tide of privation. The Ministry staffers have their work cut out for them. As Raquel Lynch explains, “we have thousands and thousands of people living in poverty here, but people think unless you look like the folks on television starving in Africa, you’re not poor.” And, “they’re comfortable thinking that.”

The stories of the impoverished, often exhausted and fearful Charlotte residents waiting in the long, snaking line outside the front doors of Crisis Assistance Ministry—hours before sunrise—remind of the tragedies and terrors of life at the edge. Homes foreclosed, apartments bolted, increased and unaffordable rental rates, shuttered buildings, power shut off, kids in the cold and on the streets, lost jobs, reduced hours, ballooning health care bills, ruined marriages, families doubling up and still unable to make it. They sometimes speak of helplessness and desperation. Most of all, perhaps, they tell of a fear and a shame about what might happen next. What will it mean to my kids, my loved ones, the ones who depend on me, if we’re evicted and can’t go anywhere else? A few blocks away, most of the clients are well aware, desperate and defeated residents live in the woods and under the bridges near uptown Charlotte. Few can bear that prospect.

Thanks to a partnership with the marvelous staff of Crisis Assistance Ministry, we have had

Homes foreclosed, apartments bolted, increased and unaffordable rental rates, shuttered buildings, power sources shut off, kids in the cold and on the streets, lost jobs, reduced hours, ballooning health care bills, ruined marriages, families doubling up and still unable to make it.

NC POVERTY RESEARCH FUND 7

CHARLOTTE:

the enlightening honor of repeated and detailed conversations, conducted over a period of eighteen months, with a group of about a dozen clients and former clients of the program. Daniel Valdez and Raquel Lynch have organized and hosted “Circles of Care” “alumni” of the

Ministry—folks who have struggled, and still struggle, at the edge of poverty in Charlotte’s most-challenging neighborhoods. The Circles women—and this group was all female—know the fear and anxiety of the Crisis Assistance Ministry morning line. And all it entails.

All were employed—several in more than one job. They were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They worked in varied low-wage pursuits: home health care, medical records, behavioral health, commercial, business, and food services. Several had experienced the downsizing of layoffs, in the banking, housing and other sectors, so they worried over unexpected future barriers and security. Each struggled with burdensome mortgage or rental expenses, the costs of utilities, child care, transportation, and medical care. All were, or earlier had been, single parents—frequently having experienced the hardship of trying and unsuccessful marriages—speaking of the challenges of “hard to navigate family relationships.” Most came from impoverished families themselves. They were, typically, intensely devoted to the welfare of their children and extended families, habituated to sacrifi cing for others.

They know the meaning of hard work, concern for their neighbors and communities, gratitude for needed assistance, and an overarching and potent desire to give back and lend a hand to those experiencing even greater hardship. Our “Circles” conversations didn’t sound much like Chamber of Commerce videos.

Poverty’s causes, and its cures, surely, are complex and variegated. But some things, they reported, are, nonetheless, fairly straightforward. Residents fi ghting to keep their families out of poverty utter a common, even repetitive, refrain. They are usually too polite to phrase it this bluntly. But, at heart, their claim is consistent: “it’s the wages stupid.”

Everybody knows it’s impossible to pay for food, rent, electricity, transportation, health and child care on seven or eight or nine dollars an hour in Charlotte, they explain. That’s true if you work overtime. It’s true if you work two jobs. Or more. As Cynthia L. puts it: “I’ve gone for years without a raise.” Why don’t they pay a wage a person might be able to live on? We work “as hard as the folks in the offi ces do, even harder.” Why don’t you “care whether the people who work for you can have a life if they work hard and do right by you?” To “live off that amount and pay for housing and everything, and then to have to go to the foods banks, and everywhere you can fi nd to get help, it’s a full time job just staying alive.” Avril sums it up this way: “I’d gladly work 24 hours a day if they’d just pay me what I could live on.” As Yolanda explains, “I guess I’m one of the working poor, but I’m not looking for a handout, just decent wages so I’m not living check to check” all the time. “I work full time and attend school part time and I ought to be able to make it on that.”

It can be diffi cult not to feel trapped. They “don’t want to help you when you’re in terrible

Everybody knows it’s impossible to pay for food, rent, electricity, transportation,

health and child care on seven

or eight or nine dollars an hour in

Charlotte, NC.

NC POVERTY RESEARCH FUND8


trouble, helping you keep your house or pay electricity or take care of your kids,” Melissa, another Crisis Assistance Ministry client and volunteer, notes. But they also “refuse to pay you a fair and decent wage so you don’t have to have that kind of help.” It “looks to me like they do it on purpose.” “We’re made to feel like we don’t matter no matter how hard we work.” Leitha adds, “the people who run things are attached to this idea that you can’t pay people a decent wage and still make enough of a profi t.”

“I don’t mind hard work. I’ve done it all my life,” Melissa reports. But “I also want to have a little bit of a life like other people do. I want the chance to advance.” With “us there’s no ‘all are created equal.’” “I’m tired of living mediocre, or less than mediocre, always left with the worst of everything.” We’re always the ones who get limited. “Where we live, the schools our kids go to, they’re always the very bottom of the barrel.” We “just want to enjoy life a little. That’s never really possible.” Plus, “I’m getting too old to keep going like this.” Pretty soon, “I won’t be able to keep up.”

Cynthia L. echoes the challenge. “I want to grow. I want a chance to make some progress.” And “even if it’s McDonalds, why can’t people like me afford to just sit with their kids and buy a little something. I mean, just a little hamburger” or something. “I’m not talking about fancy lattes or fl oats or nothing” like that. “I think we deserve a wage that we have half a chance to live on.” We “want to help our families get ahead, we want to put back into our neighborhoods. God knows they need it. But none of us can afford to do that.”

Melissa adds that “the company I work for is getting ready to lay off again.” She “escaped it” last time. But “I’ve got my doubts… we had a meeting the other day about letting us know which of our jobs will be offshored to India.” That’s what “I’m stuck with.” But, “look, I don’t want anything given to me… I want fair, livable wages where I can make ends meet for myself and I can help my family and the people I care about.” I “don’t want to be to the receiving end. I want to be on the giving end.” Cynthia N. echoes the chill: “the people you work for act like their employees don’t have actual lives.” Where “I work they just let ten people go and they didn’t think about it for two minutes,” she believes. Just “out the door – the bottom line is all that matters.”

NORTH CAROLINA’S Greatest Challenge


CHARLOTTE:

Cynthia N. explains that it can be even worse when the work isn’t steady. Sometimes “I’m desperate just looking for a job.” That means “a lot of times I have to work as a temp because I can’t get a regular job, and they treat temps real poorly.” The “work is not steady, the hours aren’t dependable, so your family can’t count on it.” And, of course, “when you’re a temp you only do the things that nobody else there wants to do.” It can be “pretty miserable.”

Leitha “got caught in the downsizing of the fi nancial services industry,” where she worked for eighteen years. Now she “does home and commercial health care services … that are backbreaking.” But “I’m stuck,” she says, “there’s no use crying about it, it’s a lot more dog eat dog in the health care trenches.” Your bosses “look, every day, only at the bottom line, the dollars.” The people “I care for, though, they have no one else.” So “there’s a mismatch between my approach to work and my bosses’ approach.” It is “the only check I can get, so I put up with it.” Life “pulls some big turns on you.”

“The pay is dreadful in home health care, even though it’s so important for the people who need it,” Leitha reminds. “I keep working extra hard, trying to get higher wages, or a promotion, but there’s nowhere to go in this work.” Sometimes “my salary even goes down, like when I had to shift to Novant when my last place had some trouble.” “I worked there for more than fi ve years…. I know what I mean to the people I care for,” though “that’s not what the people I work for think.” But “it’s God’s work caring for people who are in tough shape and who don’t have anybody to help them.” God “put me there for a reason,” she explains. “I live just like a whole lot of people I know, just sort of at the edge.” But “I bring smiles to the faces of the folks I take care of… I guess I have to try to get by on those smiles.” She just wishes she “could pay the rent and the electric bill” easier while she’s doing it.

“Trying to Keep You Down”

Rebecca, who often works more than one job, explains, “if you get any benefi ts, you have to report every cent you make.” And if you “go one dime over the limit, you can’t qualify for food stamps or child care, even though you still can’t pay your bills.” It “almost seems like they are trying to keep you down in that place.” Cynthia N. adds, “they pray that you make that one cent above the cut off, so they can take you off any benefi ts.”

Leitha feels the same frustration: “the message is you have to quit your job if you want to get some help.” Women have to “take care for the house, the family, the children, and we are the working poor. You’re looking at them.” Just “because you made a little bit over you don’t qualify for anything at all.” But “how are you going to get further” if you’re not working? “I’ve done whatever I could to stay in my house, working two jobs to pay the mortgage, but why does that mean I have to lose any help?”

Yolanda, who has two young sons, works full time, and goes to community college part time, explains, “I was told under the new rules passed by the legislature my income was $100 too high, so I couldn’t get any more help with child care.” That meant “my expenses would go up by hundreds of dollars” a month. “I’ve had to quit jobs before to keep my child care, and my



kids are all that matters to me…but I wouldn’t let them make me quit this time.” In theory, “you can get help with child care, but there’s a huge waiting list and no money.”

It is common to feel trapped in another sense as well. Rebecca and Leitha indicate “sometimes we’ve had to give up our independence because we don’t have enough money to stay by ourselves.” Cynthia nods her head: “I’m living with my daughter now. She moved down here and lives in my house.” We “sort of had to do that, because I didn’t have enough money” to make the rent and the bills. So, “I had to give up my freedom, my independence, since I didn’t have enough” money to get by. “I’d rather not do it, but I had no choice.” Sometimes “you have to give up your freedom to be able to just have a place to live.” Most of “my life I have worked low paying jobs and I know that if it were not for my family, I’d be living in poverty.” It “hurts my heart that my kids have to help me, I think I ought to be helping them.” But things “didn’t work out that way and you’ve got to take the balls that life throws at you.” You don’t “set out to be this way, you don’t want to be divorced, you don’t want to be unable to pay your bills.” But you’ve “got to have the courage to face what comes … and not give up.”

Tough Communities

Charlotte is presently undergoing one of the steepest increases in concentrated poverty in the nation. Poverty is tough. There is a great deal of research to indicate that concentrated poverty—living in communities where high percentages of residents fall below the poverty level—is a good deal tougher. In such neighborhoods, the poor not only have to cope with the challenges of their own poverty, but also with that of those around them. Unsafe neighborhoods, failing schools, substandard housing, inadequate private resources, isolation from commercial opportunity and services, and markedly diminished community assets and hope are common. High poverty communities, as a result, exact an additional toll on their residents, well beyond the burdens visited on the individual households within them. As the United States Federal Reserve has explained, there is a “’double burden’ imposed on poor families living in extremely poor communities.”10 The clients of Crisis Assistance Ministry know the impacts of the added burden well.

Yolanda explains that, in her neighborhood, “we have a lot of young men and they have no outlet, so they are hurting each other.” And “no one values them.” There is “nothing for them to do, no jobs, no community centers.” If “my son goes out with the kids he sees, he’s getting in trouble.” There are “no programs for the teenagers, no daycare for the little ones.” There is “no transportation where you can hop on a city bus to get somewhere … you have to have a vehicle or else be prepared to walk a mile to a bus stop.”

Cynthia adds “there used to be different programs where kids could participate and feel a

“There used to be different programs where kids could participate and feel a sense of accomplishment, get your energy out…but we don’t have those anymore…. they decided to close the library, now the kids just get in fi ghts.”


CHARLOTTE:

sense of accomplishment, get your energy out…but we don’t have those anymore…. they decided to close the library, now the kids just get in fi ghts.” Rebecca agrees: “there is nothing but bad stuff for them to do … when they get 12 or 13 there are summer camps, but no one I know can afford them.” There ought to be “changes in our neighborhoods, kids learn from what they see and what surrounds them.” And “when young white boys misbehave, they’re just being boys, but young black boys are regarded as thugs.” In Melissa’s experience, “a lot of crimes happen here because kids came up in a family that couldn’t give them the things they wanted and needed.”

Katie is, perhaps, more blunt. “My community is terrible, there are a lot of men who work hard, but they like to get drunk” a lot. “I don’t leave my children outside because they are very drunk and they like to pee in the streets, it’s not safe.” Sometimes “I call the police, but that causes bad feelings and can make things worse.” So, “I can’t let my kids play in the yard or be out of doors without me.” Cynthia says, “the church I go to is in Grier Heights and it’s a very, very rough neighborhood.” There are “a lot of drugs and a lot of shootings.” They “have loaves and fi shes programs at the church on weekends and sometimes the people coming in beat each other up over food.” It “seems like every week or so somebody is killed … we always have fl owers on Sundays, left over from all the funerals.” You feel like a prisoner when you can’t afford to go somewhere else.

Resilience

But if the communities where the “Circles of Care” heroes live are tough, they are tougher. Their resilience and courage and selfl essness can astound. Yolanda’s entire life is, quite literally, committed to the welfare of her two boys. “For me, independence is just about being able to take care of my kids, to be there for them” is all that matters. “I worry about them all the time.” But, “I also know my own worth.” When “I got no raise in over fi ve years, I said I wasn’t going to put up with it… I had to step out in faith and confi dence and not be scared…and I did it.”

Melissa concedes that she’s been through a lot. She had to divorce a husband who struggled with addiction. “I realized I had become an enabler.” The changes “were tough and lousy and scary.” But, they “made me stronger in the long run.” They “made me more independent.” Now, ”my son has a job he likes and my daughter is about to get her associate degree.” “I’ve also learned a lot, I found my voice, I got out of my shell.” The “truth is, as a people this is what we’ve always been through, all our lives.” It is “what our families went through before, always a fi ght, always stress, always struggling to get by. We don’t give up.”

Rebecca frets that she’s single, that she has only one income. That makes “it twice as hard to get by, to just pay my bills month to month.” But “I’m still able to be the kind of person I want to be.” If “I see someone in trouble, I try to help them.” Even “if it comes back on me, even if it costs me.” That’s just “the way I am, it’s the way things were where I grew up. I believe in it. I still do.”

Leitha recognizes that the stress is enormous. But “I’m staying, I have a very modest house,



and I have my daughter and my little granddaughter.” “I’m the matriarch. They need me. I can teach them what’s important.” “Respect. Culture. Honesty. Simplicity. Faith. You are only as good as your word. You don’t fi nd too much of that these days.” But “I can make sure they see it, they know how to live it.” That’s “what I’m put here for.”

Cynthia L. is committed to “living her life” with dignity and purpose. “I see the challenges around me.” They are to be faced, not ignored. “You know these people say they don’t know about the poverty in this city, how can that be?” It’s “impossible not to see it.” On “my way into downtown for work, I see it every day.” There’s “somebody sleeping on every bench.” How do you not know? “You don’t want to know.” People “living in a park.” People “waking up outside.” They are “moving the homeless out of downtown.” They want “to keep saying Charlotte’s a great place to live.” Just be “careful not to cross the train tracks.” Don’t “tell me you don’t know.” It’s “pure denial.” “I won’t live that way.”

And faith, for most of the Circles heroes, is never far removed from their resilience. Avril is adamant that “I would have lost my mind if I didn’t know God was on my side, I trust in the Lord.” Melissa broadens the claim, “I learned to trust the things I couldn’t see because I couldn’t depend on what I could see.”

Most of the low-income Charlotte residents we interviewed are not after a big government or charitable program designed to help with housing, or welfare, or health care. They want wages they can live on in exchange for a diffi cult and demanding day’s work. They don’t want to be passed over because of their race, or their sex, or as a result of their bosses’ expectations and shortcomings. They want a fair shot. They want a chance to advance and make economic progress. They want livable wages that recognize that if a person works hard, is responsible, and makes a contribution, she ought not have to be destitute. She shouldn’t have to worry that she’ll lose her housing or not be able to feed her kids. “If we would get a decent salary, we wouldn’t need to be thinking about food stamps or rent subsidies, we could make it on our own. That’s what we’re after.”


CHARLOTTE:

Population Characteristics

Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are young and diverse places. The median age in Charlotte is four years younger than in North Carolina overall.11 The contrast in age is heightened by differences in race and ethnicity. For example, the median age for Hispanics in Charlotte is about 12 years younger than non-Hispanic whites (Figure 1). The share of Hispanics under 18 is double that for whites, while fi ve times more whites than Hispanics are 65 or over (Appendix, Figure A-1).

Both the county and the city are majority residents of color (Figure 2). The white population has grown at a steady clip over the past three decades, but the rate of growth in racial and ethnic minorities, especially among Hispanics and Asians, has far surpassed it (Figure 3). By 2030, the Urban Institute estimates that Hispanics will make up about 21% of Charlotte’s commuting zone.12

Perhaps due to the city’s relative youth, married-couple families in Charlotte make up a smaller share of all households than in the state (Figure 4). When household types are disaggregated by race notable differences appear. Married-couple families make up just under half of all white households, but they are only a quarter of black households. The share of households with a female head of household is four times larger for blacks than whites (Figure 5).

One reason for the divergence in household type may lie with the “missing men” phenomenon. The term refers to the disproportionate number of men of color removed from the general population by premature death or incarceration. In Charlotte, black youth

White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

FIGURE 1: Median age by race/ethnicity

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

North Carolina Mecklenburg Charlotte

Med

ian

age

in y

ears



FIGURE 3: Change in population by race/ethnicity, 1980-2010

SOURCE: National Historical Geographic Information System, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 Census


570.4%

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

350%

400%

450%

500%

NC Mecklenburg NC Mecklenburg NC Mecklenburg

0102-00020002-09910991-0891

(19 years and younger) are fairly evenly divided by sex (boys and young men are 15.4% of the black population; girls and young women are 15.1%). But in every age group from 20 years and up, women outnumber men (Figure 6). For example, black women between 20 and 54 are almost 30% of the total black population but black men are only 23%—a


CHARLOTTE:

numerical difference of over 17,000 individuals. In contrast, for that same age cohort in the white population, the defi cit is only 439 men.13 Among other consequences, this imbalance can work to shrink the pool of marriageable men and available fathers.14

Charlotteans have achieved higher levels of education than North Carolinians overall. Over


FIGURE 5: Percent of households by household type, white and African American


53.6% 47.7%

29.1% 25.2%

9.0%

6.3%28.4%

29.3%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

North Carolina Charlotte North Carolina Charlotte

ENOLA KCALBCINAPSIH TON ,ETIHW

Nonfamilyhousehold

Female head ofhousehold

Male head ofhousehold

Married couple

16

FIGURE 4: Percent of households by household type

Source: US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

North Carolina

Mecklenburg

Charlotte

Percent of households

Married couple Male head of household, no wife presentFemale head of household, no husband presentNonfamily household


41% have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28% for the state (Figure 7). Whites and Asians hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree at about twice the rate as blacks and Hispanics. They also graduate from high school at higher rates. About 17% of whites in Mecklenburg have a high school diploma at most, compared to about 40% of blacks and


FIGURE 7: Percent of population with bachelor's degree or higher by race/ethnicity

NOTE: Population 25 years and older


0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic All residents

Per

cent

wit

h ba

chel

or's

deg

ree

North Carolina Mecklenburg

17


3.8%

3.5%

3.3%

6.6%

6.1%

4.4%

4.3%

4.5%

8.9%

7.5%

10.0% 5.0% 0.0% 5.0% 10.0%

Under 5

5-9

10-14

15-17

18 and 19

20-24

25-29

30-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65-74

75-84

85 and over

Percent of total black population

Age

in y

ears

FemaleMale

FIGURE 6: African American population of Charlotte by age

CHARLOTTE:

67% of Hispanics (Appendix, Figure A-2). Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ four-year cohort graduation rate shows marked improvement over time,15 but its 2014-15 graduation rate of 88.3% masks variations by race, sex, family income and English profi ciency that refl ect these different educational outcomes (Figure 8).

Income and Wealth Disparity

The past two decades have seen dramatic swings in income. Income gains were broadly shared between 1990 and 2000. The average income for each income quintile grew by more than 10% during this decade (Figure 9). (If the total number of households is divided into fi ve equal portions, each portion is a quintile.) After 2000, these gains were wiped out for all but the top 20% of households. The lowest quintiles suffered the largest reduction, and the bottom quintile was the only one to have declined between both 2000-2010 and 2010-2014.

In contrast, household incomes for the top quintile, and the top 5% in particular, show net gains between 1990 and 2014 and continue to soar above the rest of the state. The very rich in Mecklenburg County (especially the top 5%) are doing extraordinarily well, far outstripping the average household income for the top households statewide (Figure 10). Although it has declined substantially from its peak in 2000, median household income in Charlotte and Mecklenburg remains 14% higher in Charlotte and 21% higher in Mecklenburg than for the state (Figure 11).

Mecklenburg and Charlotte have many more households at the upper end of the income


NOTE: Students entering 9th grade in 2011-12 and graduating in 2014-15 or earlier

SOURCE: NC Department of Public Instruction, Cohort Graduation Rates

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Statewide Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools

All Black Two ormoreraces

AmericanIndian

Asian White Economi-cally

disadvan-taged

HispanicFemaleMale LimitedEnglish

proficient

Studentswith

disabilities

FIGURE 8: Four-year cohort graduation rate, 2014-2015

18


NOTE: 2014 dollars

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 1990 and 2000 Census; 2006, 2010 and 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates

$0

$50,000

$100,000

$150,000

$200,000

$250,000

$300,000

$350,000

$400,000

$450,000

$500,000

1990 2000 2006 2010 2014

Mecklenburg = solid line NC = dashed line

FIGURE 10: Average household income by quintile and 95th percentile, Mecklenburg County and North Carolina, 1990-2014

95th Percentile


NOTE: 2014 dollars

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 1990 and 2000 Census; 2010 and 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates

-40%

-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

1990-2000 2000-2010 2010-2014 1990-2014

Bottom quintile

2nd quintile

3rd quintile

4th quintile

Top quintile

95th percentile

FIGURE 9: Percent change in average household income by quintile, Mecklenburg County

19

CHARLOTTE:

spectrum than the state does. Twenty-fi ve percent of households in the county earn $100,000 or more; statewide, the fi gure is 18% (Figure 12). As top incomes continue to grow, and incomes at the bottom decline, inequality becomes more pronounced. The 95/20 ratio, so called because it divides the income of a household at the 95th percentile by the income of a household at the 20th, has steadily widened from 6.3 in 1990 to 9.6 in 2014. (By way of comparison, North Carolina’s 95/20 ratio for 2014 is 8.7.)16

These broad measures elide conspicuous disparities by race and gender. The percentage of African American and white households at either end of the income distribution present inverse images: over 70% of black households earn less than $60,000 a year while 59% of

NOTE: 2014 dollars SOURCE: National Historical Geographic Information System, 1980, 1990 and 2000 Census; US Census Bureau, 2006-2010 and 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

$0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000M

edia

n ho

useh

old

inco

me


1980 1990 2000 2006-10 2010-14

FIGURE 11: Median household income, 1980-2014


0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Per

cent

of h

ouse

hold

s


Under $30,000 Between $60,000-$99,999

$100,000 or over$59,999

Between $30,000-

FIGURE 12: Percent of households by income



whites earn $60,000 a year or more (Figures 13 and 14). At the median, white households in Mecklenburg earn 86% more than black and Hispanic households (Figure 15).

Earnings17 broken down by gender complicate but also affi rm racial disparities. White men in Mecklenburg have the highest earnings, making 38% more than white women and far more than any other group except Asian men. White women earn more than African Americans and Hispanics of both genders and Asian women—though not Asian men (Figure 16).


Per

cent

of h

ouse

hold

s

Under $30,000 Between $60,000-$99,999

$100,000 or over$59,999

Between $30,000-


FIGURE 13: Percent of black households by income

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Between $30,000-$59,999

Between $60,000-$99,999

$100,000 or over


Per

cent

of h

ouse

hold

s

Under $30,000


FIGURE 14: Percent of white households by income


CHARLOTTE:

$0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

All White, not Hispanic Asian Black Hispanic


FIGURE 15: Median household income by race/ethnicity


NOTE: Full-time, year-round workers, 16 years and older


$0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

Male Female Male Fema le Male Female Male Female Male FemaleTotal White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic


FIGURE 16: Median earnings by race/ethnicity and sex

Men and women with the same educational attainment have very different earnings at the median. The discrepancy gets wider with more schooling, but even at the high school-dropout level, men make over 20% more than women (Figure 17).

Finally, median household income varies dramatically by household structure. The median



household income for married-couple families in Mecklenburg is more than double that of any other household type. The disparity is especially large for households in Mecklenburg headed by a single woman (median income is just over $33,000 for female heads of household compared to almost $89,000 for married-couple families) (Figure 18).

In short, on average Charlotte and Mecklenburg County enjoy notably higher incomes than those of the state at large. They also contain larger shares of households that earn

$20,049

$28,066

$37,733

$64,985

$92,460

$15,827

$21,425

$28,396

$41,280

$53,380

Less than high school graduate

High school graduate

Some college or associate's degree

Bachelor's degree

Graduate or professional degree

Median earnings

Women Men

$0 $20,000 $40,000 $60,000 $80,000 $100,000

FIGURE 17: Median earnings by sex and educational attainment, Mecklenburg County

NOTE: Population 25 years and older SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates


$0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

$90,000

$100,000

Male householder, no wife present

Nonfamilyhouseholds

Married couplefamilies

Female householder,no husband present

FIGURE 18: Median household income by household type



CHARLOTTE:

$100,000 or more per year compared to North Carolina. Still, income disparities by race, sex, education and family structure lead to massive chasms between the prospects and the conditions found in varied Charlotte communities and households. Worrisome too are indications that the middle class overall is shrinking. As the Pew Research Center recently reported, between 2000 and 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households in the Charlotte metro area declined from 59% to 52%—while at the same time, the share of adults in lower-income households grew from 21% to 28%.18

Poverty

Poverty mirrors income trends. In 2000, when the median household income was at its peak, the poverty rate—that is, the percentage of people with total family incomes below a threshold amount set annually by the U.S. Census Bureau19—fell to a low of about 10% in Mecklenburg and Charlotte (Figure 19). As incomes dropped after 2000, the proportion of poor people increased and the region’s poverty rate is now closing in on the state’s, which historically ran higher. In measures of child and senior poverty, Mecklenburg fares better than Charlotte, though not by much, and Charlotte is now essentially on par with the state (Figure 20).

People of color in Charlotte-Mecklenburg experience poverty at a much higher rate than whites (Figure 21). Overall, black and Hispanic residents are three times more likely to be poor than whites. Interestingly, the Asian poverty rate for both county and city is higher than for the state, despite the fact that Asians in general have a relatively high median household income (almost $70,000).20

Among children, the poverty rate ranges from 5% for white kids in Charlotte to 36% and 39% for black and Hispanic kids (Figure 22). The poverty rate for working age African American

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2006-2010 2010-2014

Pov

erty

rat

e


FIGURE 19: Poverty rate, 1970-2014

SOURCE: NC Office of State Budget and Management, LINC, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 Census; US Census Bureau, 2006-2010 and 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates



and Hispanic adults in Charlotte is twice that for whites (22% of blacks and 25% of Hispanics as opposed to 9% of whites). For seniors the poverty rate is over three times higher (5% for whites to 19% for blacks and 22% for Hispanics) (Appendix, Figures A-3 and A-4).

Although boys and girls under 18 experience poverty at about the same rate, women over 18 tend to be poorer than men through the remainder of their lifetime (Figure 23). In Charlotte, women who are single heads of household are fi ve times more likely to be poor than a married couple (Appendix, Figure A-5).


0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

All people Child Senior

Per

cent

in p

over

tyFIGURE 20: Poverty rate for all people, children and seniors



0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%


Pove

rty

rate

FIGURE 21: Poverty rate by race/ethnicity



CHARLOTTE:

Charlotte no longer is immune from the daunting levels of poverty seen in the rest of North Carolina. Nearly one in fi ve Charlotteans falls under the stingy federal poverty threshold, about one in four blacks and nearly a third of Hispanics. Child poverty is particularly alarming, affecting 35% of black kids and almost 40% of Hispanic children. Black and Hispanic poverty rates, across the board, are over three times as high as those experienced by whites in Charlotte, and the poverty rates for black and Hispanic children are over six times as high as those for white children. Poverty rates for households headed by women of color are disproportionately high. The number of Charlotte residents, especially those of color, facing intense economic hardship is as disconcerting as it is surprising.


0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

UNDER 18 18-64 65 AND OVER TOTAL

Pov

erty

rat

e

FIGURE 23: Poverty rate by age and sex



0%5%10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%


Pove

rty

rate

FIGURE 22: Child poverty rate by race/ethnicity




Concentrating Poverty

Poverty can characterize a place as well as people. When poor people are clustered together in poor neighborhoods, spatial concentration creates additional burdens beyond the hardships created by individual circumstances. Neighborhoods of concentrated poverty compound and intensify individual poverty.21

In Mecklenburg, the number of “high poverty” census tracts (with 20% or more of the population living in poverty) has multiplied in recent years. Additionally, many more people now live in high poverty tracts. In 2000, 19% of the county’s census tracts were high poverty; four tracts had a poverty rate of 40% or more (Map 1). By 2014, the number of high poverty tracts had jumped to 34% of all tracts.22 Seventeen tracts had poverty rates over 40%—a 325% increase from 2000 (Map 2). In 2000, 34% of poor people in the county lived in a high poverty census tract. In 2014, 64% of poor people—and 30% of all residents regardless of income—lived in a high poverty tract.23

The concentration of poverty has also deepened the connection between race and disadvantaged places. In 2000, it was already evident: 24 of 27 high poverty census tracts in Mecklenburg were majority nonwhite. Looking at it another way, of the 28 tracts that were at least 70% black and Hispanic, 18 were high poverty (Map 3). Of the 66 tracts that were 70% or more white, none were high poverty. Thirty percent of African Americans of any income lived in a high poverty tract, compared to only 3% of whites.

In 2014, 70 of 79 high poverty tracts

Poverty rate, 2000

0.0% - 19.9%

20.0% - 39.9%

40.0% - 50.4%

MAP 1: Poverty rate by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2000

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2000 Census. All maps made using QGIS

Poverty rate, 2014

0.0% - 19.9%

20.0% - 39.9%

40.0% - 71.0%

MAP 2: Poverty rate by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2014



CHARLOTTE:

in Mecklenburg were majority nonwhite. Of the 51 tracts that were 70% or more black and Hispanic, 43 were high poverty (Map 4). This represents a 20 percentage point increase since 2000 (from 64% of high minority tracts to 84%). Only two predominantly black census tracts were not high poverty, and one was teetering on the brink with a poverty rate of 19.4%. Fourteen of the 17 tracts that were 40% or more poor in 2014 were also at least 70% nonwhite, and many of these were almost entirely so. As in 2000, none of the tracts that were 70% or more white were high poverty. High poverty tracts were home to over half of the county’s black residents. While the number of whites who resided in high poverty tracts jumped 460% between 2000 and 2014, the overall share of white residents in poor tracts was still comparatively small (15%).

Patterns of concentrating poverty, and overlapping separation according to race, are apparent in Charlotte schools as well. About 71% of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ (CMS) approximately 146,000 students are students of color.24 Over 60% of CMS students attend schools where more than half of students are eligible for free and reduced price lunch (FRL) programs, a commonly used proxy for poverty. Still, only 23% of white CMS students attend majority-poverty schools, while 77% of black students and 80% of Hispanic students do.25 If all schools enrolled students that refl ected the overall racial make up of CMS students, about 30% of the student body in any given school would be white and about 70% would be minority. Because housing patterns reinforce racial isolation, most white students (61%) attend schools that are majority white and most minority

Percent black and Hispanic

0.9% - 19.9%

20.0% - 49.9%

50.0% - 69.9%

70.0% - 99.5%

Poverty rate 20% and over

40% and over

MAP 3: Percent black and Hispanic by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2000

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2000 Census

Percent black and Hispanic

1.5% - 19.9%

20.0% - 49.9%

50.0% - 69.9%

70.0% - 96.5%

Poverty rate 20% and over

40% and over

MAP 4: Percent black and Hispanic by census tract, Mecklenburg County, 2014




students (87%) attend schools that are majority nonwhite. Almost half of minority students (49%) go to schools that are almost entirely nonwhite (90% or more).26

Even high schools, which draw on a wider geographic area than elementary or middle schools, are not immune to the infl uence of residential segregation. Ten of the 31 high schools in the school district are over 90% minority and 15 are over 80%.27 As with neighborhoods, concentrated race in schools results in concentrated poverty. Majority-nonwhite high schools have more poor students. Over 50% of students participate in the FRL program in most of the majority-nonwhite high schools for which data is available. None of the majority-white high schools have a FRL participation rate over 30%.28

These numbers bode ill for minority student achievement. A recent study of math and reading test scores from across the country found that parental socioeconomic status and residential segregation are the strongest predictors of the academic achievement gap between white students on the one hand and black and Hispanic students on the other.29 A New York Times analysis of the study’s data shows that within Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, white students are 2.3 grades ahead of the national average, while black and Hispanic students are behind by .9 and .6 grades, respectively.30 Map 5 illustrates the link between poverty and student performance: all the failing schools and 72% of schools with a D have student poverty rates of 50% or higher; all of the schools with an A and 86% of the schools with a B have a student poverty rates of 50% or less.31 Even as students in high poverty and racially segregated schools face greater personal challenges, the schools themselves tend to have diminished resources, fewer highly qualifi ed teachers, and weaker frameworks of parental and volunteer involvement than more affl uent institutions.32

Patterns of concentrated poverty and residential segregation have far-reaching consequences beyond education.33 Homeowners in poor and minority neighborhoods accumulate far less wealth in the form of home equity than residents of higher-income neighborhoods. For example, the median home value in census tract 29.05, which is 93% white and 8% poor,

School report card grade

ABCDF

0.0% - 9.9%

10.0% - 19.9%

20.0% - 29.9%

30.0% - 39.9%

40.0% - 71.0%

Poverty rate, 2014

MAP 5: School "report card" grade and poverty rate by census tract



CHARLOTTE:

is $870,500. On the other end of the spectrum are tracts like 51 where 3% of its residents are white and 45% are poor. There, the median home value is $72,000.34 The median home value for white homeowners in Charlotte is over $100,000 more than for African American homeowners ($224,600 to $123,700) and over $91,000 more than the median home value for Hispanics ($133,200).35

Furthermore, residential segregation cuts across class lines. Middle-income black and Hispanic households are more likely than low-income white households to live in a poor neighborhood.36 In the Charlotte metropolitan area, the average black or Hispanic household with a median income of $50,000 lives in a less prosperous neighborhood than the average white household with a median income of $25,000.37 As a consequence, well-off minority households in poor neighborhoods are limited in their ability to build wealth through homeownership, in addition to shouldering the other disadvantages that beset poor places.

The housing market crash in 2007 also had an especially debilitating impact on minority wealth. Nationally, blacks and Hispanics, especially those in segregated neighborhoods, were disproportionately targeted for subprime loans during the housing boom and, as a result, were more likely to go into foreclosure.38 In the wake of the recession, median home values declined at a larger rate for African American and Hispanic homeowners.39 In Charlotte, between 2007 and 2014, the value of owner-occupied homes dropped by 8% for whites, 14% for blacks and 20% for Hispanics.40 Home values for those who lived in neighborhoods with high rates of foreclosure also dropped due to the “spillover” effect, or the decline in value associated with being located near a foreclosed home.41 Because home equity comprises the largest share of black and Hispanic households’ net wealth,42 one of the lasting legacies of the housing crash is a diminution of that wealth, the effects of which are predicted to remain for years.43

Homeownership, historically less prevalent among people of color, also fell in the aftermath of the housing crisis. In Mecklenburg County in 2000, the homeownership rate for African Americans was 48% (compared to 77% for whites). That percentage dropped to 43% by 2014. However, Asians were the racial group with the largest collapse in homeownership rates between 2000 and 2014, with a 17% decline. Hispanics actually made large gains in homeownership over this same period (Appendix, Figure A-6).44 However, at 38%, Hispanics still have the lowest homeownership rate among the major racial/ethnic groups in the county (Appendix, Figure A-7).

Housing costs in Charlotte strain homeowner and renter budgets alike. Median gross rent in Mecklenburg is 19% higher than in the state.45 A renter in Mecklenburg has to earn at least $29,800 a year in order to afford a one-bedroom unit, requiring a minimum wage worker to toil at 2 full-time jobs.46 Forty-nine percent of renters and 31% of homeowners in Charlotte are cost-burdened—meaning they pay more than 30% of their income for housing—and the rate is higher for African Americans and Hispanics (Appendix, Figures A-8 and A-9). Add transportation to the mix and a family with two workers and a household income at the median spends over $28,000, or over half its income, on combined housing and transportation



costs.47 Despite high housing costs, the Urban Institute estimates that the number of units available for “extremely low income” residents (making 30% or less of area median income) has shrunk by half since 2000, even as the need has doubled. Excluding federal assistance such as vouchers from the equation reduces the number of affordable units to zero.48

Wealth, as distinct from income, has come to the policy foreground in recent years as an important measure of household fi nancial wellbeing. Wealth tallies all of a household’s assets and debts in order to assess available fi nancial resources. Wealth can help a family endure a rough patch, serve as a springboard to future advancement or fund a comfortable retirement. While homeownership is an important component of wealth for many people, it is not easily monetized, making it hard to draw on for unexpected expenses. More important in this regard are household savings.

“Asset poverty,” which is the lack of suffi cient savings to subsist at the poverty level for three months in the absence of income, captures the share of households with little or no wealth. Over a third of all Charlotteans, and over half of the city’s African Americans and Hispanics, are asset poor.49 Any number of ordinary life circumstances—a car repair, medical emergency, job loss—could severely strain these households’ limited fi nancial resources. Additionally, many Queen City residents have at best a tenuous relationship with traditional fi nancial institutions. In one of the country’s leading banking centers, more than 8% of residents are unbanked and 21% are underbanked, making them susceptible to predatory practices and lenders.50

Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University, and his colleagues at The Equality of Opportunity Project have conducted extensive studies of intergenerational economic mobility and the infl uence of neighborhood on children’s future earnings, among other topics. His research indicates that the intense deprivation, inequality and segregation represented by Charlotte’s expanding concentrated poverty make moving up the economic ladder exceedingly diffi cult.51 According to his analysis, a child in Mecklenburg County raised by parents in the fi rst income quintile (at the bottom) has only a 3.3% chance of making it into the top-earning quintile as an adult, and only a one in four chance of making it out of the fi rst or second quintile at all. Conversely, a child born to parents in the top quintile has a 58% chance of landing in the fourth or fi fth quintile (Figure 24).52

Chetty’s research also shows that where you grow up effects future earnings. Growing up in Mecklenburg infl icts an income penalty on all kids, though it is especially harsh for kids from low-income families. On average, a poor child in Mecklenburg will make $3,600 less at age 26 than the national average.53 This puts Mecklenburg in the bottom 3% of all counties in the United States and 99th out of the 100 largest counties in the nation.54

Concentrations of poverty result in elevated crime rates, diminished property values, weakened public schools, circumscribed access to social and commercial services, and drastically limited job opportunities. A University of North Carolina study of the most economically distressed census tracts revealed that four of the state’s ten most brutally disadvantaged tracts are located in Charlotte (Table 1).55


CHARLOTTE:

SOURCE: The Equality of Opportunity Project, Online Data Table IV

FIGURE 24: Percent chance that a child raised in one quintile will move to another quintile, Mecklenburg County

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

% of kids w/parents in Q1 who end up

in…

% of kids w/ parents in Q2 who end up

in…


in…


in…


in…

5th quintile

4th quintile

3rd quintile

2nd quintile

1st quintile

TABLE 1. Economically distressed census tracts in North Carolina (ranked by urban area and most distressed overall)

Urban tract rank

Overall tract rank City

Census tract Neighborhood

1 2 Charlotte 52 Lockwood

2 3 Charlotte 56.04 University City South and College Downs

3 4 High Point 139 Leonard Ave.

4 5 Winston-Salem 8.01 Waughtown and Columbia Heights

5 6 Charlotte 23 Grier Heights

6 8 Charlotte 39.03 Capitol Dr., Jackson Homes and Boulevard

7 9 Raleigh 509 Central Raleigh and South Park

8 10 Winston-Salem 5 Northeast Winston

9 11 Winston-Salem 7 East Winston

10 11 Greensboro 110 Cumberland

SOURCE: High and Owen, North Carolina’s Distressed Urban Tracts: A View of the State’s Economically Disadvantaged Communities



The Economy, Labor Force and Low-Wage Work

If Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s socioeconomic data show a region cleaved by disparities in race and income, its labor force and economic indicators highlight larger dynamics that accentuate these differences, especially in employment and wages.

Historically, the unemployment rate for Mecklenburg and Charlotte has been lower than the state’s (Figure 25). During the past recession, while unemployment in the city peaked at 9.4%, the county closely tracked the state, reaching 10.7% in 2010. Charlotte’s unemployment rate began to drop before the county’s, but by the close of 2015 both county and city had returned to about pre-recession levels (4.8% and 4.4% respectively).56 Unemployment remains at elevated levels for Hispanic and black workers; the black unemployment rate in particular is more than double the white and Asian rate (Appendix, Figure A-10).

Compared to their state counterparts, workers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg are more attached to the labor force. The labor force participation rate57 and employment-to-population ratio58 are robust and remain consistently above those measures for North Carolina (Figures 26 and 27). Among racial and ethnic groups, the labor force participation rate is highest among Hispanics and lowest for whites (Appendix, Figure A-11). A larger share of workers in Charlotte work more hours per week, and more weeks per year, than workers in North Carolina (Appendix, Figures A-12 and A-13).

Mecklenburg’s economy, however, is increasingly stratifi ed along high-wage/low-wage lines. On the one hand, the county is strong in industries that employ educated, white-collar workers. Compared to the state, the fi nance, professional and technical services,

Une

mpl

oym

ent

rate

SOURCE: NC Department of Commerce, Local Area Unemployment Statistics

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%North Carolina Charlotte Mecklenburg

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014

FIGURE 25: Unemployment rate, 1990-2014


CHARLOTTE:

management, and information sectors are especially dominant (Appendix, Table 1). On the other hand, low-wage industries in retail, administrative services, and accommodations and food services are a large and growing segment of the regional economy. These three sectors employ the largest number of private workers in the county (Figure 28).

Mecklenburg’s economy has been expanding faster than North Carolina’s. Between 1994


SOURCE: National Historical Geographic Information System, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 Census and 2008-2012 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates; US Census Bureau, 2013 and 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates

North Carolina CharlotteMecklenburg

50%

55%

60%

65%

70%

75%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2008-2012 2013 2014

Labo

r fo

rce

part

icip

atio

n ra

te

FIGURE 26: Labor force participation rate, 1970-2014


SOURCE: National Historical Geographic Information System, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 Census and 2008-2012 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates; US Census Bureau, 2013 and 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates


40%

45%

50%

55%

60%

65%

70%

75%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2008-2012 2013 2014

Per

cent

em

ploy

ed

FIGURE 27: Employment to population ratio, 1970-2014



and 2014, total employment grew by 53%, compared to 22% for the state (Appendix, Figure A-14). Manufacturing was the only signifi cant sector that lost jobs in this period (Appendix, Figure A-15). In 1994, average annual employment for manufacturing was over 46,000, or 13% of all private employment in the county. By 2014, average annual employment had shrunk to 32,000, or just under 6% of all private employment. Even at its height, however, manufacturing was not the core industry it was elsewhere in North Carolina. In 1994, service-providing jobs were already 81% of all private employment. Additionally, manufacturing’s decline in the county was not as precipitous as in the state overall. Mecklenburg’s economic diversifi cation and its specialization in industries related to the burgeoning knowledge economy absorbed some of the disruption caused by manufacturing’s decline.

However, about 88% of jobs lost between 1994 and 2014 were in manufacturing—and almost all provided a solid middle class wage (Appendix, Table A-2). Many of the jobs that have emerged to take their place pay wages at the high or low end. For industries with the largest employment gains between 1994 and 2014, 28% of jobs pay $117,000 or more and 44% pay $38,000 or less. Only 27% have wages in the middle (Table 2).

Large and overarching disparities in earnings also exist along racial lines. Almost without exception, black workers are paid less, in any given industrial sector, than whites, Asians or Native Americans (Table 3).

SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Mecklenburg North Carolina

FIGURE 28: Employment by industry

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

Per

cent

of t

otal

em

ploy

men

t

FIGURE 28: Employment by industry


CHARLOTTE:

TABLE 2. Industries with largest employment gains, 1994-2014

NAICS code Industry

Change in employment

Annual average pay

722 Food services and drinking places 24,664 $17,987

561 Administrative and support services 23,634 $37,559

522 Credit intermediation and related activities 17,160 $117,012

551 Management of companies and enterprises 16,207 $124,412

541 Professional and technical services 16,062 $82,673

621 Ambulatory health care services 13,612 $66,571

481 Air transportation 9,683 $66,024

624 Individual and family services 8,287 $26,944

523 Securities, commodity contracts, investments 7,410 $141,560

452 General merchandise stores 6,567 $31,621


TABLE 3. Average monthly earnings by industrial sector and race

Sector White BlackAmerican Indian Asian

Construction $5,375 $3,135 $4,269 $4,008

Manufacturing $6,697 $3,924 $4,662 $5,178

Wholesale trade $7,367 $3,651 $4,458 $5,203

Retail trade $3,134 $1,946 $2,154 $3,099

Transportation and warehousing $4,814 $2,894 $3,661 $3,425

Information $10,344 $4,758 $5,934 $10,049

Finance and insurance $16,978 $6,442 $10,819 $15,402

Real estate $5,505 $2,965 $3,744 $4,604

Professional and technical services $7,274 $4,395 $5,039 $7,947

Administrative and support and waste services $4,339 $1,993 $2,723 $5,373

Health care and social assistance $6,133 $3,050 $4,283 $9,151

Accommodation and food services $1,902 $1,414 $1,640 $1,744

Other services $3,532 $2,160 $2,087 $2,375

NOTE: Sectors with missing or nondisclosed data are omitted

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, Quarterly Workforce Indicators



Looking at workers through an occupational lens provides greater insight into wages.59 In Mecklenburg, almost half of workers (46%) fall into one of four major occupational groups—Offi ce and Administrative Support, Sales, Food Preparation and Serving Related, and Transportation and Material Moving (Figure 29). Low-wage employment dominates these four occupational groups. Over half of employment in Sales, 68% in Offi ce and Administrative Support, 72% in Transportation and 99% in Food Preparation is low wage (Appendix, Table A-3).

Because no standard defi nition of “low wage” exists, we categorize occupations with a median annual wage of less than $35,699 as low wage. This is the amount calculated by the NC Budget and Tax Center as the minimum necessary for basic subsistence for a one-adult, one-child family in Mecklenburg County.60 Using this one-budget-fi ts-all approach has drawbacks but it serves as a useful shorthand approach.61

Every major occupational group with a median annual wage below $35,699 has suffered fl at or declining pay over the past decade. For example, even as the median annual wage for managers increased 30% between 2004 and 2014 (from $88,634 to $114,828 in 2014 dollars), wages for food preparers and servers and health care support workers dropped 7% (from $20,131 to $18,750) and 14% (from $28,178 to $24,110), respectively (Appendix, Table A-4).62

For the ten largest specifi c occupations in Mecklenburg County (a subset of the major occupational groups discussed above), seven have a median annual wage less than

SOURCE: NC Department of Commerce, Occupational Employment and Wages in North Carolina.

0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000

Office and Administrative SupportSales and Related

Food Preparation and Serving RelatedTransportation and Material MovingBusiness and Financial Operations

ManagementHealthcare Practitioners and Technical

Computer and MathematicalProduction

Installation, Maintenance, and RepairEducation, Training, and Library

Protective ServiceConstruction and Extraction

Healthcare SupportBuilding & Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance

Personal Care and ServiceArchitecture and Engineering

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and MediaCommunity and Social Services

LegalLife, Physical, and Social Science

Farming, Fishing, and Forestry

Estimated employment

FIGURE 29: Employment by occupation, Mecklenburg CountyFIGURE 29: Employment by occupation, Mecklenburg County


CHARLOTTE:

$35,699 (Appendix, Figure A-16). These occupations alone account for 17% of employment in the county. Overall, almost half of employment in Mecklenburg is in occupations with a median annual wage equaling less than $35,699 annually (Figure 30).

Seven of the ten occupations projected to have the greatest

employment growth regionally between 2012 and 2022 are low wage (Table 4). These occupations are already among the largest in the county. As employment in predominantly low-wage occupations expands, the gap between upper- and lower-income workers will intensify and Charlotte will become increasingly unequal.

FIGURE 30: Occupational employment by wage tier

NOTE: "High wage" is defined as twice the median household income for Mecklenburg County

SOURCE: NC Department of Commerce, Occupational Employment and Wages in North Carolina

47.8%

46.6%

5.6%Low wage (<$35,699)

Middle wage ($35,699-$112,943)

High wage (>$112,943)

TABLE 4. Occupations with largest projected employment growth through 2022, Southwest Region

Occupational Title

2012 Employment Estimate

2022 Employment Estimate

Net Change

Percent Change

Median Annual Wage

Registered Nurses 21,139 26,165 5,026 23.8 $58,162

Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food 27,912 32,709 4,797 17.2 $17,951

Retail Salespersons 34,211 38,979 4,768 13.9 $20,936

Customer Service Representatives 26,185 30,497 4,312 16.5 $31,196

Home Health Aides 7,133 9,881 2,748 38.5 $19,157

Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive

14,813 17,498 2,685 18.1 $33,333

Nursing Assistants 11,227 13,792 2,565 22.8 $22,169

Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers 13,004 15,540 2,536 19.5 $38,588

General and Operations Managers 16,206 18,615 2,409 14.9 $112,422

Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand 19,431 21,626 2,195 11.3 $24,434

SOURCE: NC Department of Commerce, Labor and Economic Analysis Division, Occupational Projections



Charlotte’s trajectory is concisely summarized in a Brookings Institution analysis of economic development in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the US.63 Each was evaluated on three critical measures—growth, prosperity and inclusion. Over the past ten years, Charlotte has performed well on growth and middling on prosperity, ranking 18th and 50th out of 100. Inclusion is a different story, with Charlotte coming in at 95th. These markers, along with others noted in this report, serve as cautionary signals about Charlotte’s current path.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Charlotte’s economic portrait is one of both impressive attainment and daunting challenge. The city and Mecklenburg County have experienced remarkable trends of population growth and demonstrated signifi cant economic prowess in recent years, and for generations, through periods of general recession and widely-experienced expansion. Incomes are demonstrably higher, on average, than those statewide and notably larger segments of the community are high income, by any measure. Substantially higher percentages of Charlotteans, for example, enjoy incomes in excess of $100,000 a year than is true of the rest of the state.

Still, the fruits of distinctive prosperity are not broadly enjoyed. Racial income disparity is very pronounced. The median household income for whites is dramatically higher than it is for blacks and Hispanics. The great bulk (over 70%) of black households report incomes under $60,000 while almost six of ten white families receive over that amount annually. The chasm grows even wider for women of color and for households headed by single mothers.

Poverty, unsurprisingly, echoes racial income disparity. Three times as many Charlotte blacks and Hispanics live in poverty as whites. The numbers are even more crushing for kids. Five percent of white children, compared to 36% of black and 39% of Hispanic children, are designated as poor by the federal government. Again, households headed by women of color fare even more starkly.

But rapid expansions of concentrated poverty in Charlotte refl ect even larger challenges. The last fi fteen years have produced marked increases in neighborhoods or communities in which over twenty percent of all residents are impoverished. In 2000, about 19% of Charlotte census tracts refl ected such distress, now almost 35% of tracts do. Tracts where over 40% of residents live in poverty have risen even more signifi cantly (4 such tracts in 2000, 17 by 2014). Almost two thirds of all poor Charlotteans live in high poverty neighborhoods. It was about a third in 2000. Median rents are markedly higher than for the state as a whole. A relatively high percentage of city renters are cost-burdened. Housing available for extremely low-income residents dropped notably in the last decade. Studies report that half or more of black households experience asset poverty. Four of the ten most severely economically distressed census tracts in the state of North Carolina are located in Charlotte. In the national banking center, almost ten percent of residents are unbanked.


CHARLOTTE:

The concentrations of economic distress are also highly racialized. Of the twenty Charlotte census tracts, in 2000, that were over 70% black, 17 were high poverty tracts. By 2014, 70 of the 79 high poverty census tracts were majority-minority. Of the 17 tracts experiencing over 40% poverty, 16 were majority-minority. In 2000, over 30% of all black residents of Charlotte lived in high poverty neighborhoods, while only 3% of whites did. By 2014, half of all Charlotte black residents lived in high poverty communities. Accumulating patterns of poverty, skewed by race, are refl ected in the public school enrollments as well. Over 60% of Charlotte school children attend schools where over half of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. Still, only 23% of white children attend such schools while 77% of black and 80% of Hispanic students do. Almost 89% of minority students attend majority-minority high schools. Many of these schools are almost entirely comprised of minority students. Ten of the 26 majority-minority high schools are over 90% minority students and 15 are over 80%.

Such high poverty and racially segregated schools tend to have diminished resources, less highly qualifi ed teachers, and weaker frameworks of parental and volunteer involvement than more affl uent institutions. North Carolina has seen, through its school “grading system,” a dramatic correlation between high poverty schools and diminished academic achievement.64 Such education structures and practices also contribute markedly to challenges of economic mobility.

Finally, Charlotte’s economic hardship, disparity and polarization are bolstered by unfolding patterns of employment and compensation—the increasingly dominant impact of low-wage work. Economic expansion produces more robust job creation and labor force participation than is experienced in the rest of the state. Still, unemployment rates for African-Americans and Hispanics are roughly double those of whites. In all industries, blacks are paid more poorly than whites. And, more universally, middle-income jobs are increasingly replaced by strongly stratifi ed employment opportunities for all Charlotteans. Four of the ten industries with largest job gains have been relatively low wage (under $38,000) and three have been high wage (over $100,000). Salaries for low-wage occupations have been either stagnant or have actually declined over the past decade. For example, food preparation jobs, which make up a signifi cant portion of new positions, have experienced a drop in wages of 7% over the last decade. Management job salaries, on the other hand, have risen over 30%. Almost half of all Mecklenburg county jobs are in low-wage occupations. About a third of employed working age people have personal incomes under $24,000.65 Seven of the ten occupations projected to grow most signifi cantly in the county over the next decade are low wage, suggesting that patterns of stratifi cation will not only continue, but perhaps increase, in the years ahead. Increasingly, low-wage workers in Charlotte echo Cynthia L. who we interviewed at Crisis Assistance Ministries: “I think we deserve a wage that we have half a chance to live on. We want to help our families get ahead, we want to put back into our neighborhoods. God knows they need it. But none of us can afford to do that.”



Recommendations

It is perhaps obvious to state that no single, silver bullet will eliminate the growing challenges of poverty, income disparity, mobility and economic hardship in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its causes are vast, variegated, complex and potent. We have no laundry list to proffer. Nor would one be warmly welcomed and embraced if we did. Opinions vary on the effectiveness of purported anti-poverty tools and, more telling, no consensus exists, in North Carolina or in Mecklenburg County, on the asserted obligations of governmental institutions to address the causes and cures of economic deprivation, marginalization and extreme inequality. So our recommendations are general ones.

First, in order to address growing problems of economic hardship, isolation, marginalization and debased opportunity, it is essential to recognize profoundly that they, in fact, exist. Poverty is often invisible to much of the community in Charlotte. Being unseen, disadvantage and even exploitation can be readily dismissed. A series of perhaps initially unwelcome national studies and comparisons have cast a more probing eye on challenges of economic and racial disparity in the Queen City. Deep chasms of poverty, child poverty, concentrated poverty, wage fragmentation and economic immobility are now increasingly explored, documented, debated and addressed by both public and private entities in search of effective solutions to these undeniable challenges. The paradox of wrenching poverty amidst plenty is, no doubt, Charlotte’s most daunting challenge. It won’t be overcome by ignoring it. A pointed focus on the plight of those at the bottom of the economic ladder is, of course, essential to signifi cant achievement. That seems to be occurring notably at both the city and county levels. As is true with all daunting and defi ning problems, attentions and responding actions must be bold, sustained and enduring.

Second, no issue embodies Charlotte’s increasing problems of polarization and marginalization more explicitly, and more dramatically, than its expanding and heavily racialized concentrated poverty. Charlotte is home, in brief, to both North Carolina’s greatest wealth and economic prowess and its most crushing and expansive deprivation. As Elizabeth Kneebone from the Brookings Institution has concluded, “very poor neighborhoods face a host of challenges that come from concentrated disadvantage—from higher crime rates and poorer health outcomes to lower-quality educational opportunities and weaker job networks.” A family in a poor neighborhood “must deal not only with the challenges of individual poverty, but also with the added burdens that stem from the place in which [it] lives.”66 Concentrated poverty, of course, implicates a complex suite of issues and policy determinations – in racial equity, in housing, in education, in sustainable economic growth, in family structure, in public and private infrastructure, in transportation, and vitally, as discussed below, in wage structure. But there can be little doubt that efforts to achieve income mobility and meaningful opportunity in Charlotte cannot be divorced from the burgeoning, racialized and concentrating poverty that drives at marginalization’s core.67 Practically speaking, mobility, inequality, segregation and poverty cannot be effectively separated. They are the joined cousins of economic injustice.


CHARLOTTE:

Third, an intensifying labor force segmentation, driven by the dominance and expansion of low-wage work, serves to entrench Charlotte’s much-noted economic mobility and concentrated poverty challenges. As our Crisis Assistance colleagues effectively repeated: “it’s the wages.” High percentages of Charlotte full-time workers can be characterized as low-income workers. Most are over 30. They are disproportionately female, black, Hispanic and Native American. As they’ve explained in these pages, it is not feasible to pay for food, rent, power, transportation, health and child care on eight or nine dollars an hour in Charlotte. And it appears that the polarization between high and low paying jobs will likely continue, and even expand, in the years ahead. Charlotte seems, therefore, like a poster child for the movement, sweeping much of the nation, to signifi cantly raise the minimum wage. The current North Carolina governor and General Assembly, however, have shown a marked hostility to minimum wage increases, even acting to remove the power of municipal governments to enact such ordinances. No doubt local offi cials and citizens can continue to press for mandated wage increases in political discourse at the state level. Until the landscape changes, however, wage efforts will likely be limited to the city and county’s own employees and to voluntary private sector campaigns. Local governments can, however, deploy the carrot as well as the stick by working to assure more effective programs in affordable housing, child care, tax relief, food and transportation subsidy and the like. Much has been made, understandably, of Charlotte’s poor rankings in economic mobility. But even if the city moved, importantly, from 50th among the country’s major metropolitan areas, to 45th, or 40th, few would be satisfi ed that, in a community as ambitious, accomplished and economically powerful as Charlotte, tens or hundreds of thousands of residents continue to live at the edge of desperation, or beyond it.

Fourth, and fi nally, as students of poverty and economic hardship across North Carolina, it is important to say that such distress seems to present a different moral issue in the state’s wealthiest community. At present, we are exploring economic deprivation in Goldsboro, Hickory, Salisbury, Roper and Lumberton – communities that enjoy little of the economic might and prowess of Mecklenburg County. Charlotte’s explosion of low-wage service jobs, essential to meet the variegated needs of notably higher income residents, suggests a framework of policy choices more diffi cult to explain and defend. Families at the bottom can be squeezed by a daunting regime of rising costs, pressures and isolation, and, effectively, shrinking resources. Even if the economy improves more broadly, workers at the bottom of the ladder tend to lose ground. Pockets of poverty and economic distress therefore mushroom. A city of commercial prowess, generating otherwise impressive levels of income and wealth, becomes, or maintains, a potent landscape of economic apartheid. Amidst great and burgeoning wealth, stunning numbers are locked out. They are denied meaningful prospects to thrive, as they serve others who prosper.



APPENDIX: Additional Figures and Tables

18.7%27.2%

35.5%

13.2%

7.1%

2.6%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

White, not Hispanic Black Hispanic

Per

cent

of p

opul

atio

n

Under 18 years 65 years and over

FIGURE A-1: Percent of population by age


Per

cent

with

HS

dip

lom

a at

mos

t

MecklenburgNorth Carolina

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic All residents

FIGURE A-2: Percent of population with no high school diploma or with high school diploma as terminal degree



CHARLOTTE:

Appendix: Additional Figures and Tables (continued)

Pov

erty

Rat

e

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%



FIGURE A-3: Poverty rate for ages 18-59 by race/ethnicity


Pov

erty

Rat

e


0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%


FIGURE A-4: Poverty rate for ages 60 and over by race/ethnicity




Pov

erty

Rat

e


6.0%

19.4%

30.7%

16.8%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Married couple Male householder, no wife present

Female householder, no husband present

Nonfamily household

FIGURE A-5: Poverty rate by household type


Pov

erty

Rat

e


-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%


FIGURE A-6: Change in homeownership rate by race/ethnicity, 2000-2014

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2000 Decennial Census and 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates


CHARLOTTE:



0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic (any race)

Per

cent

of h

ousi

ng u

nits

tha

t ar

e ow

ner

occu

pied

FIGURE A-7: Home ownership by race/ethnicity


FIGURE A-8: Percent paying 30% or more of household income for housing

NOTE: Only includes homeowners with a mortgage


Renters Homeowners

51.0%48.7% 49.2%

31.2% 29.8% 30.7%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%




FIGURE A-9: Percent paying 30% or more of household income for housing by race/ethnicity, Charlotte


Renters Homeowners

36.8%

53.7% 53.0%

21.1%

32.9%

42.7%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

White, not Hispanic Black Hispanic


9.2%

5.8%

13.9%

6.0%

10.5%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

Total White, not Hispanic Black Asian Hispanic

Per

cent

of p

opul

atio

n 16

and

ove

r

FIGURE A-10: Unemployment rate by race/ethnicity

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates


CHARLOTTE:



0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%


FIGURE A-11: Labor force participation rate by race/ethnicity

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates

North CarolinaMecklenburgCharlotte

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

35 or more

less than 35

did not work

Usu

al n

umbe

r of

hou

rs w

orke

d pe

r w

eek

FIGURE A-12: Usual number of hours worked per week




North CarolinaMecklenburgCharlotte

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

50-52

40-49

27-39

less than 26

did not work

Wee

ks w

orke

d in

the

past

12

mon

ths

FIGURE A-13: Weeks worked in past 12 months


TABLE A-1. Industry snapshot, Mecklenburg County

SIZE CONCENTRATION PAY GROWTH 1994-2014

Industry Total Employment

Location quotient

Average annual pay

Change in employment

% Change in employment

Real wage growth

All industries 538,701 1 $60,430 179300 49.9% 29.5%

Natural resources and mining 969 0.19 $49,229 507 109.7% 15.7%

Utilities 1,854 0.85 $108,019 1448 356.7% 100.7%

Construction 28,271 0.99 $58,882 6557 30.2% 31.2%

Manufacturing 32,007 0.45 $67,753 -14211 -30.7% 28.1%

Wholesale trade 36,233 1.28 $69,943 2858 8.6% 20.1%

Retail trade 61,368 0.81 $31,129 18929 44.6% 5.9%

Transportation and warehousing 29,497 1.66 $54,315 13828 88.3% 20.9%

Information 20,327 1.76 $90,602 3941 24.1% 60.0%

Finance and insurance 53,509 2.19 $112,768 26111 95.3% 73.3%

Real estate and rental and leasing 11,306 1.35 $57,893 4379 63.2% 43.2%

Professional and technical services 43,288 1.31 $82,673 16062 59.0% 18.7%

Management of companies and enterprises 27,458 2.14 $124,412 16207 144.0% 59.6%

Administrative and waste services 54,437 1.21 $37,736 24523 82.0% 63.9%

Educational services 9,367 0.86 $37,599 5678 153.9% 14.6%

Health care and social assistance 46,653 0.61 $49,899 22752 95.2% 1.1%

Arts, entertainment, and recreation 13,604 1.39 $43,683 8846 185.9% 28.2%

Accommodation and food services 53,822 0.88 $18,805 26318 95.7% 13.1%

Other services, except public administration 14,732 0.91 $38,011 2976 25.3% 27.6%



CHARLOTTE:


North CarolinaMecklenburgP

erce

nt c

hang

e in

em

ploy

men

t

FIGURE A-14: Percent change in employment, 1994-2014


-75%

-25%

25%

75%

125%

175%

NOTE: Total private employment, annual averages SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000 Trade/transportation/utilities

Professional and businessservicesManufacturing

Financial activities

Leisure and hospitality

Education and healthservicesConstruction

Information

Other services

Natural resources and mining

FIGURE A-15: Employment by sector, 2001-2014



TABLE A-2. Industries with largest job losses, 1994-2014

NAICS codeNumber of jobs lost

Percent of jobs lost Industry

Annual average pay

334 -4600 -68.2% Computer and electronic product manufacturing

$115,104

311 -1466 -29.5% Food manufacturing $51,555

323 -1422 -39.2% Printing and related support activities

$48,083

326 -1244 -28.2% Plastics and rubber products manufacturing

$54,702

315 -1075 -100.0% Apparel manufacturing

n/a

322 -1050 -44.2% Paper manufacturing

$58,641

511 -867 -23.1% Publishing industries, except internet

$105,187

314 -849 -78.7% Textile product mills

$45,764

313 -778 -56.4% Textile mills $52,551

339 -720 -33.6% Miscellaneous manufacturing

$51,242

NOTE: Some data missing or nondisclosed



CHARLOTTE:


TABLE A-3. Percentage of jobs in each occupational group with annual median wage below $35,699

NOTE: Some data missing or nondisclosed. This analysis includes 98% of all occupations in Mecklenburg County.


Occupational code

Occupation Percent low wage

Annual wage, median

39-0000 Personal Care and Service 100.0% $21,822

35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related 99.0% $18,750

37-0000 Building & Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance 97.0% $20,895

31-0000 Healthcare Support 88.9% $24,110

45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry 83.3% $19,785

51-0000 Production 73.0% $31,185

53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving 71.9% $31,410

43-0000 Offi ce and Administrative Support 68.1% $33,856

33-0000 Protective Service 58.9% $30,975

41-0000 Sales and Related 52.2% $31,247

47-0000 Construction and Extraction 43.1% $35,547

27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media 30.9% $44,283

25-0000 Education, Training, and Library 28.9% $42,171

21-0000 Community and Social Services 19.1% $43,526

29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical 8.2% $59,706

49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair 6.4% $41,989

19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science 1.9% $61,672

23-0000 Legal 1.6% $62,334

11-0000 Management 0.0% $114,828

13-0000 Business and Financial Operations 0.0% $67,764

15-0000 Computer and Mathematical 0.0% $82,641

17-0000 Architecture and Engineering 0.0% $72,545



TABLE A-4. Percent change in median annual wage


Occupational Code Occupation

2004 estimated annual wage, median (2014 $)

2014 estimated annual wage, median

Percent change in wage

11-0000 Management $88,634 $114,828 29.55%

17-0000 Architecture and Engineering $62,904 $72,545 15.33%

13-0000 Business and Financial Operations $60,233 $67,764 12.50%

15-0000 Computer and Mathematical $74,679 $82,641 10.66%

29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical $54,313 $59,706 9.93%

21-0000 Community and Social Services $39,600 $43,526 9.91%

19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science $56,452 $61,672 9.25%

53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving $30,781 $31,410 2.04%

00-0000 Total All occupations $37,487 $38,045 1.49%

25-0000 Education, Training, and Library $41,601 $42,171 1.37%

45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry $19,671 $19,785 0.58%

27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media $44,057 $44,283 0.51%

43-0000 Offi ce and Administrative Support $34,459 $33,856 -1.75%

47-0000 Construction and Extraction $36,943 $35,547 -3.78%

51-0000 Production $32,461 $31,185 -3.93%

35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related $20,131 $18,750 -6.86%

33-0000 Protective Service $33,651 $30,975 -7.95%

49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair $46,550 $41,989 -9.80%

41-0000 Sales and Related $34,856 $31,247 -10.35%

37-0000 Building & Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance $23,314 $20,895 -10.38%

39-0000 Personal Care and Service $25,209 $21,822 -13.44%

31-0000 Healthcare Support $28,178 $24,110 -14.44%

23-0000 Legal $82,215 $62,334 -24.18%


CHARLOTTE:


FIGURE A-16: Largest occupations by employment with median annual wage, Mecklenburg County


$0

$20,000

$40,000

$60,000

$80,000

$100,000

$120,000

$140,000

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

Med

ian

annu

al w

age

Empl

oym

ent

Estimated employment Estimated median annual wage



Endnotes1. US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages,” accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.bls.gov/cew/data.htm.

2. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Real GDP in Chained Dollars,” Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Metropolitan Area under Regional Data, GDP and Personal Income, accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_regional.cfm.

3. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Table CA1 Personal Income, Population, Per Capita Personal Income,” Local Area Personal Income and Employment under Regional Data, GDP and Personal Income, accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_regional.cfm.

4. Charlotte posted the second largest population gain between 2010-2013 for the 25 biggest cities. Darryl T. Cohen, G. W. Hatchard, and S. G. Wilson, “Population Trends in Incorporated Places: 2000 to 2013,” Current Popuation Reports (US Census Bureau, 2015), https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1142.pdf. See also Kathleen Purvis and Gavin Off, “Charlotte Joins Nation’s Fastest-Growing Big Cities,” Charlotte Observer, December 5, 2014, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9241220.html

5. US Census Bureau, “Population Estimates, July 1, 2014 (V2014), Mecklenburg County and Charlotte City,” Quickfacts, accessed May 12, 2016, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/37119,3712000.

6. US Census Bureau, “PEPANNRSIP: Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 50,000 or More, Ranked by July 1, 2014 Population: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2014 - United States -- Places of 50,000+ Population, 2014 Population Estimates,” American FactFinder, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

7. US Census Bureau, “Population Estimates, July 1, 2014 (V2014), Mecklenburg County and North Carolina,” Quickfacts, accessed May 11, 2016, www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/37,37119.

8. Harvard University, “The Equality of Opportunity Project,” http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/index.php; Graham MacDonald and Erika C. Poethig, “We’ve Mapped America’s Rental Housing Crisis,” Urban Wire (Urban Institute, March 3, 2014), http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/weve-mapped-americas-rental-housing-crisis; Richard Shearer et al., “MetroMonitor 2016: Tracking Growth, Prosperity, and Inclusion in the 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas” (Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, January 2016), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/fi les/interactives/2016/metro-monitor/metromonitor.pdf; Elizabeth Kneebone, “The Growth and Spread of Concentrated Poverty, 2000 to 2008-2012” (Brookings Institution), accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2014/concentrated-poverty.

9. US Census Bureau, “Population Estimates, July 1, 2014 (V2014), Mecklenburg County and Charlotte City.”

10. “The Enduring Challenge of Concentrated Poverty in America: Case Studies from Communities Across the U.S.” (Community Affairs Offi ces of the Federal Reserve and the Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, 2008): 5, http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/fi les/cp_fullreport.pdf.

11. US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey, “Table B01002,” American FactFinder, accessed May 11, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

12. Urban Institute, “Mapping America’s Futures,” Charlotte, 2010-2030 (assuming average birth, average death and average migration), accessed May 12, 2016, http://urbn.is/AmericasFutures.

13. US Census Bureau, “Table B01001B” and “Table B01001H,” American FactFinder, accessed May 11, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

14. In an April 2015 article, The New York Times estimates that approximately 15,000 black men are “missing” in Charlotte. Charlotte ranked eighth in the number of missing men in larger cities in the US. Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt, and Kevin Quealy, “1.5 Million Missing Black Men,” The New York Times, April 20, 2015, sec. The Upshot, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html.

15. The four-year cohort graduation rate for students who were in 9th grade in 2011-12 and graduated in 2014-15 or earlier is 13.7 percentage points higher than it was for students who were in 9th grade in 2002-03 and graduated by 2005-06. NC Department of Public Instruction, Accountability Services Division, “4-Year Cohort Graduation Rates,” Cohort Graduation Rates, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/reporting/cohortgradrate.

16. US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey, “Table B19080,” American FactFinder, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

17. “Earnings” are wages or salary plus income from self-employment. “Income” is earnings plus interest, dividends, rental income, pension payments, public assistance and other sources of income.

18. Pew Research Center, “America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas” (Pew Research Center, May 11, 2016), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fi les/2016/05/Middle-Class-Metro-Areas-FINAL.pdf. Pew defi nes “middle income” as between two-thirds and double the US median household income after adjusting for household size. For a three-person household, the middle-income range is about $42,000 to $125,000 a year, with variations between metro areas due to cost of living adjustments.

19. The federal poverty threshold in 2014 (the most recent year available) for a family with two adults and two children is $24,008. For more information, see US Census Bureau, “How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty,” Poverty, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html.

20. According to the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, the median household income for Asians is just under $69,000 in both Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The overall median household income is $53,274 in Charlotte and $56,472 in Mecklenburg County.

21. “The Enduring Challenge of Concentrated Poverty in America: Case Studies from Communities Across the U.S.”

22. The number of high poverty tracts in 2000 was 27 out of 144. By 2014, that number is 79 out of 233. The number of census tracts changed between 2000 and 2014 because new tracts were created after the 2010 Census to accommodate population growth.

23. US Census Bureau, Census 2000, “SF 3, Table P004” and “Table DP-3,” American FactFinder, accessed May 12, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov; US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey, “Table B03002” and “Table B17001,” American FactFinder, accessed May 12, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

24. NC Department of Public Instruction, Financial and Business Services, “Grade, Race, Sex, 2015-2016,” Data & Reports - Student Accounting, February 23, 2016, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/accounting/data/.

25. PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, “National Equity Atlas,” School Poverty - Charlotte City, NC, accessed May 11, 2016, http://nationalequityatlas.org/.

26. NC Department of Public Instruction, Financial and Business Services, “Grade, Race, Sex, 2015-2016.”

27. Ibid.

28. NC Department of Public Instruction, Financial and Business Services, “Grade, Race, Sex, 2015-2016”; NC Department of Public Instruction, Financial and Business Services, “Free and Reduced Meals Application Data, 2014-2015,” Data and Reports, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/resources/data/.

29. Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides, and Ken Shores, “The Geography of Racial/Ethnic Test Scores Gap” (Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis, April 2016), https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/fi les/wp16-10-v201604.pdf.

30. Motoko Rich, Amanda Cox, and Matthew Bloch, “Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares,” The New York Times, April 29, 2016, sec. The Upshot, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html.

31. NC Department of Public Instruction, “2014-15 School Report Cards,” NC School Report Cards, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/src/; NC Department of Public Instruction, Financial and Business Services, “Free and Reduced Meals Application Data, 2014-2015,” Data and Reports, http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/resources/data/.

32. Rich, Cox, and Bloch, “Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares.”

33. Richard Rothstein, “From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, April 29, 2015, http://www.epi.org/blog/from-ferguson-to-baltimore-the-fruits-of-government-sponsored-segregation/.

34. US Census Bureau, 2010-2014 American Community Survey, “Table B03002,” “Table B17001,” and “Table B25077,” American FactFinder, accessed May 11, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

35. US Census Bureau, 2014 American Community Survey, “Table S0201,” American FactFinder, accessed May 11, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

36. Sean F. Reardon, Lindsay Fox, and Joseph Townsend, “Neighborhood Income Composition by Household Race and Income, 1990-2009,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 660, no. 1 (July 1, 2015): 78–97, doi:10.1177/0002716215576104. For a good summary of Reardon’s study, see David Leonhardt, “Middle-Class Black Families, in Low-Income Neighborhoods,” The New York Times, June 24, 2015, sec. The Upshot, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/upshot/middle-class-black-families-in-low-income-neighborhoods.html.


CHARLOTTE:

37. According to Reardon’s analysis, a typical black household in the greater Charlotte area with a median income of $50,000 lives in a neighborhood where the median income is $43,664 and the poverty rate is 18%. The typical white household with a median income of $25,000 lives in a neighborhood where the median income is $49,232 and the poverty rate is 14.2%.

38. Jackelyn Hwang, Michael Hankinson, and Kreg Steven Brown, “Racial and Spatial Targeting: Segregation and Subprime Lending within and across Metropolitan Areas,” Social Forces 93, no. 3 (March 1, 2015): 1081–1108, doi:10.1093/sf/sou099; Debbie Gruenstein Bocian et al., “Lost Ground, 2011: Disparities in Mortgage Lending and Foreclosure” (Center for Responsible Lending, November 2011), http://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/research-analysis/Lost-Ground-2011.pdf.

39. Valerie Wilson, “Home Values Have Seen Starkly Disparate Recoveries by Race,” Economic Snapshot, Economic Policy Institute, October 15, 2014, http://www.epi.org/publication/home-values-starkly-disparate-recoveries/.

40. US Census Bureau, 2007 and 2014 American Community Survey, “Table S0201.”

41. Debbie Gruenstein Bocian, Peter Smith, and Wei Li, “Collateral Damage: The Spillover Costs of Foreclosures” (Center for Responsible Lending, October 24, 2012), http://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/research-analysis/collateral-damage.pdf.

42. Paul Taylor et al., “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics” (Pew Research Center, July 26, 2011), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fi les/2011/07/SDT-Wealth-Report_7-26-11_FINAL.pdf.

43. Sarah Burd-Sharps and Rebecca Rasch, “Impact of the US Housing Crisis on the Racial Wealth Gap Across Generations” (Social Sciences Research Council, June 2015), https://www.aclu.org/fi les/fi eld_document/discrimlend_fi nal.pdf; Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry, “Wealth Inequality Has Widened Along Racial, Ethnic Lines Since End of Great Recession,” FactTank, News in the Numbers, Pew Research Center, December 12, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/.

44. US Census Bureau, Census 2000, “SF 1, Table H011,” and 2010-2014 American Community Survey, “Table B25003,” American FactFinder, accessed May 11, 2016, http://factfi nder2.census.gov.

45. US Census Bureau, 2014 American Community Survey, “Table S0201.”

46. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “North Carolina,” Out of Reach 2016: North Carolina, accessed May 12, 2016, http://nlihc.org/oor/north-carolina.

47. US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Department of Transportation, “Location Affordability Portal, Version 2,” Location Affordability Index, Mecklenburg County, NC, accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.locationaffordability.info.

48. Graham MacDonald and Erika C. Poethig, “We’ve Mapped America’s Rental Housing Crisis,” Urban Wire (Urban Institute, March 3, 2014), http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/weve-mapped-americas-rental-housing-crisis.

49. Corporation for Enterprise Development, “Assets and Opportunity Profi le: Charlotte,” Local Profi les (Corporation for Enterprise Development, July 2012), http://cfed.org/assets/pdfs/CharlotteProfi le.pdf.

50. Ibid. People who are “unbanked” do not have or use a checking or savings account; the “underbanked” are those who may have a bank account but rely on alternative fi nancial services.

51. Raj Chetty et al., “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States” (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014), http://www.nber.org/papers/w19843. Chetty’s research suggests that variation in mobility is correlated with fi ve factors: 1) racial and income segregation; 2) income inequlity; 3) school quality; 4) social capital; and 5) family structure.

52. The Equality of Opportunity Project, “Online Data Table 4: Complete County-Level Dataset: Causal Effects and Covariates,” Data from Chetty and Hendren (2015): Causal Effects, Mobility Estimates and Covariates by County, CZ and Birth Cohort under Downloadable Data, accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/index.php/data.

53. Gregor Aisch et al., “The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up: How Your Area Compares,” The New York Times, May 4, 2015, sec. The Upshot, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-worst-places-to-grow-up-how-your-area-compares.html.

54. Ibid; Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility: Childhood Exposure Effects and County-Level Estimates” (The Equality of Opportunity Project, Harvard University, 2015), http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_paper.pdf.

55. William High and Todd Owen, “North Carolina’s Distressed Urban Tracts: A View of the State’s Economically Disadvantaged Communities” (Center for Urban and Regional Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 2014), https://curs.unc.edu/fi les/2014/02/NC-Distress-Update-fi nal.pdf.

56. NC Department of Commerce, Labor and Economic Analysis Division, “Local Area Unemployment Statistics,” Demand Driven Data Delivery System, accessed May 12, 2016, http://d4.nccommerce.com/LausSelection.aspx.

57. The labor force participation rate is the share of the working age population that is working or looking for work. Because people can stop looking for work for many reasons, it can be hard to pinpoint reasons for fl uctuations (dips in the rate could be due, for example, to baby boomers retiring or people giving up on looking for work). For this reason it’s useful to compare the labor force participation ratio with the employment-to-population ratio.

58. The employment-to-population ratio is the number of employed civilians to the total non-institutionalized working age population. It’s a good yardstick for measuring an economy’s ability to create suffi cient employment for a growing population.

59. Occupation describes a worker’s tasks and activities; industry describes a fi rm’s product. An accountant can work in many different industries, but her occupation remains constant.

60. Alexandra Sirota, Tazra Mitchell, and Cedric Johnson, “Living Income Standard 2014: Boom in Low-Wage Work Means Many North Carolinians Don’t Make an Adequate Income” (NC Budget and Tax Center, NC Justice Center, 2014), http://www.ncjustice.org/sites/default/fi les/LIS%20report%20-%20PN-WEB2.pdf. The Budget and Tax Center’s Living Income Standard tallies the cost of absolute necessities for families of different sizes for every county in North Carolina. Costs include housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, taxes and other exigencies such as clothing for children, household supplies and the like, but not gifts, dining out, savings or other less expedient expenses.

61. The Justice Center Living Income Standard is lower and more conservative than two other commonly used living wage measures.The MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates the living wage in the Charlotte MSA for one adult and one child as $45,947 annually. The EPI Family Budget Calculator for the same size family estimates an annual budget of $47,794. MIT Living Wage, “Living Wage Calculation for Mecklenburg County, North Carolina,” Living Wage Calculator, accessed May 11, 2016, http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/37119; Economic Policy Institute, “Annual Costs, Charlotte/Gastonia Metro Area,” Family Budget Calculator, accessed May 11, 2016, http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/.http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/.

62. NC Department of Commerce, Labor and Economic Analysis Division, “D4 OES More Detail Page,” Occupational Employment and Wages in North Carolina, accessed May 13, 2016, http://d4.nccommerce.com/OESSelection.aspx.

63. Brookings Institution, “Metro Monitor,” accessed May 13, 2016, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2016/01/metro-monitor#V0G16740.

64. Lynn Bonner and T. Keung Hui, “NC Public School Letter Grades Refl ect Wealth of Students’ Families,” The News & Observer, February 5, 2015, http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article10255961.html.

65. University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center, “IPUMS-USA,” accessed May 12, 2016, https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml.

66. Elizabeth Kneebone, Carey Nadeau, and Alan Berube, “The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty,” Metropolitan Opportunity Series (Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, November 2011), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/fi les/papers/2011/11/03-poverty-kneebone-nadeau-berube/1103_poverty_kneebone_nadeau_berube.pdf.

67. See Paul A. Jargowsky, “Concentration of Poverty in the New Millennium: Changes in Prevalence, Composition, and Location of High Poverty Neighborhoods” (Century Foundation and the Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Education, 2014), https://tcf.org/assets/downloads/Concentration_of_Poverty_in_the_New_Millennium.pdf.


MORE INFORMATION

Gene R. Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Heather Hunt

is a Research Associate at Carolina Law. The research and publication work of Nichol, Hunt and their colleagues is supported by the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund of the University of

North Carolina School of Law.

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