GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A decade ago, Forbes made a big splash when it published an article before Martin Luther King Jr. Day that ranked Grand Rapids the second worst large U.S. metro area for Black prosperity.
The story generated lots of conversation, and it’s still mentioned today by the Black community and in discussions about diversity, equity and inclusion.
Ten years after it was published, MLive decided to look at how the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area has performed in terms of economic prosperity for the Black community. Have we stayed the same? Improved? Gotten worse?
RELATED: 10 years after damning Forbes report, has Grand Rapids improved for Black residents?
To find out, MLive reviewed census data for the largest 50 U.S. metro areas between 2013 and 2023, the most recent 10-year period available.
While there are bright spots, such as growth in median household income, the five-county Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area’s Black population had the worst homeownership, educational attainment and business ownership rates among the big metros.
Here’s a look at how Forbes did its analysis, and how the Grand Rapids-Wyoming area compares with the biggest metros in the U.S. on key indicators:
How Forbes did its analysis
The Forbes report used 2013 data to examine how Black people in the 52 largest metro areas in the U.S. performed on four criteria: homeownership, self-employment, median household income, and population growth. The factors were combined into one overall ranking.
The Grand Rapids-Wyoming Metropolitan Statistical Area ranked second to last, one spot ahead of Milwaukee. The Grand Rapids metro area includes Kent, Ottawa, Barry, Ionia, and Montcalm counties.
The data MLive examined — one-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey — did not include detailed Black population statistics (outside of population figures) for two of the 52 largest metro areas: San Jose and Salt Lake City.
That’s because the Black population in those metros was not at 65,000, which is the threshold metro areas must reach for detailed population statistics, a Census Bureau spokesperson told MLive.
Population
Overall, the five-county Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area had roughly 1.2 million people in 2023, census estimates show.
That’s up 14% from a decade earlier.
Of the 52 biggest metro areas in the U.S., Grand Rapids-Wyoming ranked no. 48 for total population, coming in just ahead of Buffalo, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut.
The Black population was estimated at 74,058, about 6.4% of the total population. When ranking the metros based on what percentage of the overall population is Black, Grand Rapids placed no. 43 out of 52.
While small, the region’s Black population grew 12.4% over the past decade. That’s a smaller increase than the overall population. But it’s still significant when considering that 21 of the 52 metro areas, including Detroit, saw a decline in the Black population.
Homeownership
For homeownership, the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area was a study in extremes.
The region had the highest overall homeownership rate, 74.8%, among the biggest U.S. metros in 2023, census data show. But, at the same time, its Black homeownership rate, 30.1%, was the worst.
Over the 10-year period MLive examined, the Black homeownership rate in the Grand Rapids metro area was flat at 30%.
One other metro area from Michigan, the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area, is among the 50 biggest metros in the U.S. The homeownership rate among the Black community there was significantly higher than it was in Grand Rapids: 50.5%.
Nationwide, the Atlanta metro area had the highest homeownership rate at 55.7%, followed by Washington D.C. at 52.8% and Birmingham, Alabama, at 52.5%.
Median Household Income
Median household income was one bright spot for the Black population in the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area.
In 2023, the figure totaled $47,292, up 85% from a decade ago, census estimates show.
Despite that increase, there’s still a significant income gap between Black households and the overall population.
Median household income for the overall population reached $77,979, up 49%.
Another way to look at income is how the overall population’s median household income compares with the Black population.
In 2013, the median income for Black households was about half the overall population’s median household income. That was the second worst income ratio among the 50 biggest metros.
A decade later, Black households were earning about 61% of the overall population’s median household income. That increase was one of the biggest among the 50 metros. But it was only enough to improve the region’s ranking by four spots, to no. 45 of 50.
Nationwide, the Riverside-San Bernardino, California, metro area had the highest income ratio between the Black and overall population: 89%.
It was followed by Orlando, Florida, at 82.5%, and Atlanta at 82%.
Business Ownership
Compared to the 50 biggest metros, the Grand Rapids-Wyoming area has a shortage of Black-owned businesses.
In 2021, the most recent year data were available, 0.8% of businesses in the region with more than one employee were owned by African Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey and the Brookings Institution.
That was the lowest rate among the 50 biggest metros.
Nationwide, Atlanta had the highest percentage of Black businesses with more than one employee: 8.8%.
It was followed by Washington D.C. with 7.8% and Memphis, Tennessee, with 6.7%, data show.
Educational Attainment
In 2023, an estimated 17% of the Black population age 25 and older in the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area had a bachelor’s degree or above, census data show.
That’s the lowest rate among the 50 biggest metro areas.
While the rate is low, that’s up from 13.6% in 2013.
For the Detroit metro area, 20.8% of the Black population had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2023, data show.
Nationwide, Washington D.C. had the highest rate, 40.8%, followed by Austin, Texas, with 40.2%.
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