I’ll have to interrupt my series on Medicaid, which was delayed by a computer problem at home, to call your attention to recent data from the American Community Survey. The data on educational attainment, written up in today’s Times, is in fact shocking. I say that as someone who has looked at similar data over long periods of time. It’s not so much the direction of the change, which corresponds with what I see on the street, but its scope and speed.
The share of the city’s population that is high-school and college-educated is soaring; the share that has not completed high school is plunging. This cannot be the result of the educational attainment of those who comes through the city’s schools: the state’s policy of making the life-chances of the city’s children even worse that it would otherwise be has thus far succeeded. Rather, it is a function of who is moving in and who is moving out or dying off. The former are better off than the latter, and the population turnover appears to be rapid.
When the economic data comes out at the end of August, we’ll have to see what the city’s poverty rate and labor force particpation rate are, relative to the national average. New York City had below average poverty in 1969; its residents were more likely than average to be working in 1959. Brooklyn’s per capita income was above the national average in 1969. But after the welfare explosion in the 1960s and the economic collapse of the 1970s, that ceased to be the case. New York City’s poverty rate has been at around 20 percent since then, and it has become "the city that doesn’t work" in terms of its high dependency ratio. Brooklyn, in particular, became impoverished and dependent.
What happened then? Those educated in New York City back when it had decent schools took their human capital assets to the suburbs and the Sunbelt, to states like North Carolina, enriching them. Meanwhile, the poor and troubled, who other places had failed to educate and care for, arrived in droves to take their place. Despite having been a good place for the poor in the 1940s and 1950s, and despite helping millions of people advance out of poverty, the city became a poorer place as a result of migration.
Could this the 1970s be reversed in a decade? We’ll find out. One thing for sure — it’s better to be poor in a place with a low poverty rate. The chance of finding a job, and having your children get an education that moves them out of poverty, is far higher. New York City has been a lousy place for the poor for 30 years, but its poverty rate could fall even so — once again as a result of migration. Perhaps this will allow the economic escalator that was New York City will start working again.
On the other hand, one wonders what will happen to the older suburbs in the next economic downturn. Their housing stock is reaching 50 years old, the same age at which large areas of New York City became suddenly poorer in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, the sort of people who like living near people from different backgrounds live in the city; some suburbs might experience flight. I predict increasing zoning conflict between those who purchased houses at high prices and want to create a rental unit to help cover the mortgage, and towns who want to keep out people who require services.
Meanwhile, the Times believes the reduction in the number of high school dropouts might reduce crime and the demand for social services in New York City. That’s true to an extent. But it may make it more difficult for the state to get away with sticking city residents with inferior schools — unless it can convince another generation of such residents to move out of the city for the benefit of the children (building the LIRR to GCT and another NJT tunnel, but not the Second Avenue Subway, would help here). Rising educational attainment is not good news in Albany, where the preference is for any additional funds provided to the city’s schools to be used for richer and earlier pensions for school personnel commuting in from the suburbs, not for better schools.
One wonders if this huge demographic change will be enough to shake things up in Albany. It’s one thing to run the state for the benefit of those cashing in and moving out, at the expense of the young and those moving in, when those moving in and getting screwed are less well off. When those moving in are more educated, it’s possible they might catch on and try to put a stop to it. Wake up young people! Don’t let them do to you and your children what they did to my kids’ generation! The enemy is in Albany!