Economist finds that people in America's poorest neighborhoods are more likely to live in female headed households and have less formal education than residents of wealthier communities.

Poor Neighborhoods Have More Single Mothers

The percentage of families headed by a single mom in metropolitan neighborhoods with different poverty levels in 1990 were:

· female-headed households are much more common in high-poverty neighborhoods, regardless of race.
· female-headed households are much more common among blacks, regardless of neighborhood poverty level.
· poor families are somewhat more likely to be headed by a single mom in high-poverty vs. low-poverty neighborhoods (73.1% vs. 55.2%), especially for blacks and Hispanics.
· poor families are much more likely to be headed by a single mom for blacks (80.2% vs. 52.7% for whites and 48.1% for Hispanics), no matter where they live.

Neighborhoods may have less of an effect on family structure than is often assumed. Single-mother families may be more common in high-poverty neighborhoods (56.6% vs. 14.9%) largely because such neighborhoods tend to have more African-American residents. Race, not space, determines family structure.

Poor Neighborhoods Have Less-Educated Adults

The educational backgrounds of adults in different neighborhoods reveal that residents of high-poverty areas receive less formal education than residents of low-poverty areas.

· Less than 17% of people living in high-poverty areas possess some type of college degree, while more than 31% of low-poverty residents have such a degree.
· More than half of all adults in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped out of high school, while less than 20% of residents of low-poverty neighborhoods did so.
· Although most 16-19 year olds in high-poverty neighborhoods are in school (78.4%), those that are not in school are more likely to be high school dropouts (15%) than graduates (6%).

© 2003 by Cartel Q

Data-- This data is from the 1990 U.S. census.