ACROSS ILLINOIS — Financial news website 24/7 Wall St. recently released an index of its findings on racial disparities in eight socioeconomic measures across U.S. metro areas, in an effort to identify the worst cities for black Americans (see below). On the list of 15 cities, eight are located in Illinois. The eight Illinois cities listed are Peoria at number 5, followed by Decatur (7), Kankakee (9), Springfield (11), Danville (13) and Chicago, Naperville and Elgin (all three tied for 15).
The cities on this list are largely concentrated in the Midwest, especially in Illinois, and the website reports some have long histories of systemic racial segregation.
5) Peoria:
- Black population: 10,946 (13.7 percent)
- Black median income: $24,504 (52.1 percent of white income)
- Unemployment: 22.5 percent black; 8.1 percent white
- Homeownership rate: 31.0 percent black; 75.0 percent white
15) Chicago, Naperville and Elgin:
- Black population: 1.6 million (16.9 percent)
- Black median income: $36,017 (47.3 percent of white income)
- Unemployment: 18.7 percent black; 5.8 percent white
- Homeownership rate: 39.9 percent black; 74.6 percent white
Methodology:
“For each measure, we constructed an index from the gaps between black and white Americans. The index was standardized using interdecile normalization so outliers in the data did not skew results,” 24/7 Wall St. reported. Other measures used, according to the website:
- Excluded were metro areas where black residents comprised less than 5% of the population or where data limitations made comparisons between racial groups impossible.
- Considered 2016 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (five-year estimates) on median household income, poverty, adult high school and bachelor’s degree attainment, homeownership, and unemployment rates.
- Data on incarceration rates came from The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to criminal justice reform, and are for the most recent available year. Because states, rather than metro areas, are responsible for the prison population, incarceration rates are for the state where the metro area is located. If a metro area spans more than one state, we used the state in which the metro area’s principal city is located.
- From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, age-adjusted mortality rates by race for each U.S. county from 2012-2016 were used to calculate mortality rates at the metro level using a variation on the indirect standardization method. Incarceration and mortality rates are per 100,000 residents.
Other findings from 24/7 Wall St.:
- The unemployment rate for black Americans fell below 6 percent for the first time in history in early 2018, and has hovered above the overall unemployment rate by several percentage points since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking it over 40 years ago. However, it’s still more than three times the white unemployment rate.
- The median annual income among black households in the United States is just $36,651, about $24,000 shy of the median income among white households.
- About half a century has passed since the Fair Housing Act legally banned discriminatory lending, zoning, and renting practices, such practices persist in much of the country in less overt ways.
- While nationwide the typical black household earns 60.1 percent of the income the typical white household earns, in Chicago the typical black household earns just 47.3 percent of the typical white household’s income.
- Just 21.3 percent of black adults in Chicago have a college degree, less than half the 43.7 percent of white adults with a degree.
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