Visiting scholar Bradley Hardy (American University) recently presented research at the Brookings Institution on the evolution of neighborhoods affected by riots during the late 1960s. The paper, coauthored with Marcus Casey (University of Illinois at Chicago), appears in a special issue of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences on the legacy of the 1968 Kerner report.
In their study, Hardy and Casey examine African American neighborhoods in cities where rioting occurred during the summer of 1967, including Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and Washington, DC. They show that the neighborhoods that directly experienced riots were homes to residents with lower incomes, lower educational levels, higher unemployment, and had higher incidence of welfare usage than other black neighborhoods that were not directly affected by riots. Moreover, these disparities in socioeconomic outcomes between residents of the neighborhoods that experienced riots, and residents of those that did not, persisted over time. For instance, between 1970 and 2010, college attainment in riot-affected neighborhoods failed to catch up to the higher rate of college attainment within the average neighborhood. Roughly 25 percent of residents in the average neighborhood of a city that experienced rioting had a college degree by 2010, versus fewer than 15 percent in riot-affected neighborhoods. As Hardy and Casey write, these trends “reflect the growing consensus among social scientists that place matters for both individual and group well-being and intergenerational advancement.”
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Source: Brookings Institution
Hardy also has a paper, coauthored with Trevon Logan (Ohio State University) and John Parman (College of William & Mary), in Place-Based Policies for Shared Economic Growth, a new policy book from the Hamilton Project. In the paper, Hardy and coauthors discuss how public policies, such as discriminatory housing policies and unequal and segregated education, have historically limited economic opportunity for African Americans and concentrated the black population in specific geographical areas. They contend that ameliorating current black-white gaps in income, wealth, and education requires understanding the complex relationship between regional inequality, race, and policies at the local, state, and national levels. For instance, since at least the 1970s, black neighborhoods in America’s major cities have lagged behind white neighborhoods on key socioeconomic indicators, including earnings, poverty, educational attainment, and employment. As the authors write, “Place-based public policies will operate against these headwinds, and should be designed accordingly.”
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