Metropolitan Conditions and Trends: Changing Contexts for a Community Initiative

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Abstract

This brief reviews recent social and economic trends in the ten metropolitan areas that form the context for the neighborhood programs being operated as a part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections initiative. It finds that these areas are strikingly different along a number dimensions and in are many ways representative of the diversity in conditions and trends across America's metropolitan areas. Since 2002, for example, two of these areas attained among the nation's highest rates of employment growth (Denver and Seattle) while two others experienced serious declines (Oakland and Milwaukee). Although there were important differences in magnitudes, all sites did share in a number of trends: minority groups growing as a share of total population, improvements in several social indicators (e.g., in crime and teen pregnancy) but, disturbingly, notable increases in child poverty.

Introduction

Conditions and trends in the metropolitan and county areas surrounding Making Connections (MC) neighborhoods have important implications for guiding strategies and interpreting results. Any given neighborhood employment target will have a different meaning in a weak labor market than one in which job growth is booming. Service approaches will be thought about differently in a county where the overall child poverty rate is high and accelerating than one in which child poverty outside of the MC neighborhood is low. Neighborhood residents will be under different pressures in areas where housing prices are growing rapidly than in those where prices are comparatively low and stable, and these differences, too, would affect strategies.

This paper provides a review of a wide range of relevant indicators for MC site contexts, describing trends from 2000 through 2006 or 2007. Indicators are grouped in five broad topics.

1. Economy and labor market
2. Demographic change
3. Income and poverty
4. Social conditions
5. Housing and mortgage market

These data, therefore, do not cover the economic and housing market turmoil that have occurred since 2007. Data that will allow analysts to begin to tell that story for the MC sites will be available over the coming year. In the meantime, however, understanding what happened in the sites under the generally positive economic conditions earlier in this decade, and how the sites differed from each other at that time, should be critical as a base for understanding what comes next.

The data (on 54 indicators, for various dates and generally grouped in this order) are presented in table A.1 at the end of this paper. The data are presented for each of the 10 MC sites and national comparison units (either the United States as a whole or the 100 largest metro areas). Data sources and definitions are presented in appendix B.

In preparing gap analyses at the time of the Wave 1 Cross-Site Survey, most local MC teams compared neighborhood conditions to conditions in their surrounding counties, rather than in their metropolitan areas. Accordingly, most of the data in this paper are presented at the county level. However, some metropolitan-area indicators are used where adequate county data are not available. We consistently refer to the sites by the name of the primary city in their metropolitan areas, rather than the name of their counties. The text and figures below review and discuss the highlights.

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