The Community Research Collaborative Blog

Income Divide Sparks Public Protests

By: John Besl

The campsites are gone from Piatt Park in downtown Cincinnati, but the discontent behind the “Occupy Cincinnati” protest movement continues to simmer, and the original “Occupy Wall Street” protest drags on.  A familiar criticism of the protests goes like this, “What do they want, and what exactly are they protesting against?”  Boiled down to its essence, the short answer is income inequality, whereby “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”  I’d like to use the space this month to report on this timely topic, first describing recent national trends, then drilling down with new state and metropolitan data from the American Community Survey.  Finally, we’ll highlight a single Cincinnati census tract that ranks first on a key measure of income inequality among some 60,000 tracts nationwide.

 

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New Data on Unemployment for Metropolitan Areas Hint at Another Downturn in the Labor Market

By: Janet Harrah

In analyzing the economy, economists and business analysts study a variety of data such as the number of jobs, number of new housing permits, number of home sales and total retail sales.  Looking at these data at one point in time usually is not very informative.  Most analysts track data over time to determine the extent to which individual industries or regions are contributing to or detracting from economic growth. 

One problem with tracking trends over a few months or quarters is that many data series have movements that recur regularly.  For example, over the course of a year, the size of the labor force, the levels of employment and unemployment, and other measures of labor market activity undergo fluctuations due to seasonal events, including changes in weather, harvests, major holidays, and school schedules. Because these seasonal events follow a more or less regular pattern each year, their influence on statistical trends can be eliminated by seasonally adjusting the statistics from month to month. These seasonal adjustments make it easier to observe the cyclical, underlying trend, and other non-seasonal movements in the series.

 

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College and Career Readiness in Northern Kentucky

By: Geoff Zimmerman

A key focus for Kentucky is preparing each student for college/career.  One aspect of Kentucky’s accountability system is the Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS).  The EPAS was developed by ACT, Inc. in response to the need for all students to be prepared for high school and the transitions they make after graduation. 

EPAS provides a longitudinal, systematic approach to education and career planning, assessment, instructional support, and evaluation.  It focuses on a number of key transition points that young people face.

 

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New Census Bureau Report Documents the Spread of Poverty

By: John Besl

The American public has been bombarded lately with sour economic news.  The Census Bureau piled even more evidence last month, with the release of its annual report on national trends in income, poverty, and health insurance coverage.  (View the report here.)  The data were collected as part of the 2011 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement. 

The number of Americans living in poverty increased to 46.2 million in 2010, the highest total in 52 years of published poverty estimates.  An additional 2.6 million people slipped into poverty between 2009 and 2010, the fourth consecutive annual increase.  The poverty rate also rose for the fourth consecutive year, from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent in 2010.

 

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Cincinnati’s Real GDP Growth: Trailing Nearly All Its Peers

By: Janet Harrah

One hears a great deal about GDP in the news lately. One might ask, “Well, just exactly what is GDP, anyway?” Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, measures the final value of all the goods and services produced in the United States in a given period of time.

The reason that economists and virtually everyone else follows GDP is because it is the broadest measure of economic output, and provides the best overall picture of economic activity. So, as the nation’s economy rises and falls, the GDP is the best way to track that progress (or more recently, the lack thereof).

 

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Demystifying High School Graduation Rates

By: Geoff Zimmerman

The high school graduation rate is a key outcome indicator that we track as a region to understand how many students are successfully completing high school.  It is a key outcome for the Strive Partnership and it is one of the three education focused Bold Goals for our region coming out of this recent comprehensive community engagement effort led by United Way.

It’s also one of the most confusing due to the numerous ways in which high school graduation rates can be calculated.  As a result, local education, policy, and business leaders are left wondering which graduation rate statistics are the most credible.  This post is an update of a brief that I put together a couple years ago intended to provide an overview of the different types of graduation rate calculations, some of the challenges associated with each method, and steps being taken to improve our understanding of graduation and dropout rates. It is critical that we have an accurate picture of how many students are completing high school.

 

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Will the Residential Construction Industry Make a Comeback?

By: Janet Harrah

At the height of the housing boom, building permits were authorized for more than 13,000 housing units per year in the Cincinnati metro area.  In 2010, just 3,200 housing units were authorized, a decline of more than 75 percent (see Table 1).  With a slow economic recovery and stricter mortgage regulations on the horizon, when or will the residential construction industry return to its prior levels of activity?

 

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“Traditional” Family – Not Endangered, but Shrinking

By: John Besl

In my last blog, I discussed the remarkable growth in recent decades in the number of births to unmarried parents, both locally and nationally.  In this month’s space, I’d like to talk about another trend, one that’s related to last month’s topic, but also reflects a separate “megatrend” - the aging of America. 

If you ask a baby boomer what the typical American household looks like, most would probably describe a mom and dad with at least one child under the age of 18.  This household type has been immortalized in TV sitcoms ranging from “Ozzie and Harriet” to “The Cosby Show” to “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  Results of the 2010 Census, however, reveal that what I prefer to call the “traditional” family now accounts for only one in five U.S. households.

 

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Postsecondary Completion in Our Region

By: Geoff Zimmerman

Postsecondary completion is an important outcome indicator to track, since it represents a milestone at the end of formal education.  Postsecondary completion can be any formal education after high school, including degree programs, certificates, or advanced training.  Through the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) site at the National Center for Education Statistics, we are able to take a look at the total number of credentials awarded for all colleges and universities in the Greater Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky region.  This represents the total output of a higher education institution in a given academic year.  The latest data available is for the year 2009, and I have pulled data by postsecondary institution, subject area, and credential awarded (including Bachelor’s Degrees, Associate’s Degrees, and Certificates).  

 

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Personal Income Rose in 2010 After Falling in 2009

By: Janet Harrah

Personal income rose in 2010 in all but four of the nation’s 366 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), according to estimates released in early August by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.  Personal income in the metropolitan portion of the United States rose 2.9 percent in 2010 after falling 1.9 percent in 2009. Personal income growth in 2010 ranged from 10.1 percent in Elizabethtown, Kentucky to -0.9 percent in Grand Junction, Colorado.

How do Cincinnati trends compare to its competitors?  In this analysis, the Cincinnati metro area was compared to 11 peer metropolitan statistical areas including:

                                                            Austin, TX                        Louisville, KY
                                                            Charlotte, NC                  Minneapolis, MN
                                                            Cleveland, OH                Pittsburgh, PA
                                                            Columbus, OH                Raleigh, NC
                                                            Denver, CO                      St. Louis, MO
                                                            Indianapolis, IN

 

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