Zeroing In on Place and Race is an in-depth
look at how disconnected youth are faring in America’s cities, with data
included on disconnected youth by state, congressional district,
county, gender, and by race and ethnicity. Disconnected youth
are teenagers and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are
neither working nor in school. There are 5,527,000 disconnected youth in
America today, or one in seven young adults (13.8 percent)—about as many people as live in Minnesota. The national disconnected youth population is larger than the populations of thirty US states.

KEY FINDINGS

  • The rate of youth disconnection has fallen since the Great Recession. Roughly
    280,000 fewer young people are disconnected today than in 2010, the
    peak year for youth disconnection during the last decade. Beneath the
    national rate of 13.8 percent, however, lies staggering variation.
  • Of the ninety-eight major metro areas included in this report—home
    to two in three Americans— disconnection rates range from under 8
    percent in the Omaha, Nebraska, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, metro areas to over 20 percent in greater Lakeland, Florida; Bakersfield, California; and Memphis, Tennessee.
  • At the national level, youth disconnection rates for blacks (21.6 percent), Native Americans (20.3 percent), and Latinos (16.3 percent) are markedly higher than rates for Asian Americans (7.9 percent) or whites (11.3
    percent). In nine metro areas, at least one in four black youth are
    disconnected. In ten metro areas, at least one in five Latino youth are
    disconnected.
  • The negative effects of youth disconnection ricochet across the
    economy, the social sector, the criminal justice system, and the
    political landscape, affecting all of us. Our analysis of a very small
    subset of the direct costs of youth disconnection reveals an
    astonishingly high cost to taxpayers: $26.8 billion in 2013 alone, or nearly the entire amount the federal government spends on science.
  • Although national patterns are generally mirrored in metro areas,
    important variation exists. For instance, a city can simultaneously be
    among the best for one racial or ethnic group and among the worst for
    another. The greater Boston metro area, which has a low
    overall disconnection rate (8.2 percent), is relatively good for white
    (6.8 percent) and black youth (9.8 percent), but not for Latinos (17.3
    percent). In the Chicago metro area, both whites and
    Latinos are doing better than they are in the country as a whole (7.5
    and 13.9 percent, respectively), but blacks are doing much worse (24.5
    percent).
  • New research for this report shows that racial segregation has
    dramatic but very different consequences for young people depending on
    their race. Our research shows that in highly segregated metro areas, black youth tend to have higher-than-average rates of disconnection, whereas white youth tend to have lower-than average rates of disconnection. In other words, residential segregation by race disproportionately harms black teenagers and young adults.

Publication Details

Title
Zeroing In on Place and Race
Authors
Lewis, Kristen, Burd-Sharps, Sarah
Publisher
Measure of America
Publish Date
June 10, 2015
Citation
Lewis, Kristen, Burd-Sharps, Sarah, Zeroing In on Place and Race (Measure of America, June 10, 2015).
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