Black, Hispanic Children Suffer Bleak Living Conditions
Living conditions experienced by children in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas continues to show a depressing picture for Black and Hispanic children, according to a new report from the Harvard School of Public Health.
The report, “Children Left Behind: How Metropolitan Areas Are Failing America’s Children,” is based on data drawn from a new Web site called DiversityData.org. The Web site was developed by HSPH in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Health and with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
According to the report, some of the best metropolitan areas for Black kids are Denver; Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. The best locations for Hispanic children were Ann Arbor, Mich.; Cincinnati; and Washington, D.C. The best cities for Asian children were Austin, Texas; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C. And for White kids, the best cities were Ann Arbor; Boston; and San Francisco.
The worse metro areas for Black children were Buffalo, N.Y.; Chicago; and New York. For Hispanic children, the worst cities were Bakersfield, Calif.; Providence, R.I.; and Springfield, Ill. The worst cities for Asian children were Bakersfield; Fresno, Calif.; and New York. And for White children, the worst cities were Bakersfield; El Paso, Texas; and New York.
Using a measure of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, the analysis showed that Black children had the worst scores for indicators of health, family income and home ownership, neighborhood income and home ownership, residential and school segregation and school poverty. In most cases, Hispanic children were the next worse off.
The report also found that average White and Black students attend schools where most of the student population is of the student’s own race. Of all groups, Asian students tend to be the most integrated and to attend schools that most closely mirror the composition of students in the metropolitan areas where they live.
