Serving UIC's Great Cities Commitment: Solutions for Today's Urban Challenges

Racial segregation, concentrated poverty, and physical deterioration of neighborhoods continues to define conditions of inequality across Chicago neighborhoods. As economic restructuring has caused a hollowing of the middle-class, stagnant wages, and retrenchment of public spending, many Chicagoans are living in economic conditions far worse than in other parts of the city.

For the next fact sheet in the Great Cities Institute’s Fact Sheet Series, we applied an economic hardship index to Chicago Community Areas to further understand economic disparities across the city. The strength of such an index is in the multiple variables considered which provides a more comprehensive view of economic hardship than single indicators. Combining poverty, income, employment, education, living conditions, and population dependency variables we can understand a range of factors contributing to economic conditions and prospects for upward mobility. The six variables we used to calculate composite economic hardship in the fact sheet include:

• Unemployment (over the age of 16 years)
• Education (over 25 years of age without a high school diploma)
• Per capita income level
• Poverty (below the federal poverty level)
• Crowded housing (housing units with more than one person per room)
• Dependency (population under 18 or over 64 years of age)

The index was developed by Richard P. Nathan and Charles F. Adams Jr in 1976 and has since been applied to cities and regions throughout the U.S. by researchers and policymakers to measure economic hardship. This index has wide application across policy areas due to the interconnectedness of economic factors to overall quality of life. For example, in 2012, this particular index was used by the City of Chicago’s Department of Public Health to understand the neighborhood characteristics that impact health outcomes and behaviors.

It is our hope that this hardship index will contribute to the understanding of urban issues and provide our civic and community partners with information to improve the quality of life in Chicago.

Data highlights from the factsheet include:

• The Loop (8.6 hardship index score), Near North Side (8.6) and Lakeview (9.6) had the three lowest hardship index values.
• The Community areas with the next three lowest Index scores were Lincoln Park (11.1), the Near South Side (14.3), and North Center (14.9). The six Community areas with the lowest hardship index scores share boarders.
• The five Community Areas with the lowest hardship index scores, The Loop, Near North Side, Near South Side, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview are all located along Lake Michigan.
• The Community Areas with the highest hardship index scores are Riverdale on the far south side (82.7 hardship index score), and Gage Park (70.6) and South Lawndale (73.6) on the Southwest side.
• The Near West Side (26.8 hardship index score), West Town (22.3) and Logan Square (29.5) boarder the areas with lowest hardship index scores to their east. Some of the highest index scores in Chicago were located to the west including Humboldt Park (63.6), East Garfield Park (58.8) North Lawndale (65.1), and South Lawndale (73.6).
• A cluster of Community Areas on the South and Southwest Sides of Chicago had among the highest hardship index scores in the city. The cluster of Community Areas which had high hardship index score included Washington Park (66.2 hardship score), Fuller Park (64.5), New City (69.1), Brighton Park (65.4), Englewood (68.8), West Englewood (64.8), and Gage Park (70.6).
• The Pullman Community Area had the median hardship index value (45.4) for all Community Areas. In addition to the index calculations, Community Area level data for each variable is included in the factsheet.

Please stay tuned for our forthcoming report on economic hardship.

Last week, the Chicago Tribune utilized a new data report prepared by GCI in the article “Chicago tackles youth unemployment as it wrestles with its consequences.“ The report was utilized to determine which neighborhoods experienced short-term changes in youth employment. In neighborhoods with short-term changes, the article’s author, Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, explores the community conditions and practices surrounding the local employment conditions.

The Tribune piece tells stories of youth, their challenges to find employment and chronicles how conditions such as neighborhood population loss, diminishing resources for the vulnerable and impoverished, neighborhood perceptions, and lack of large-scale training programs have contributed to the crisis of youth unemployment. The article then identifies job training, education, and placement programs along with direct employers whose efforts have positively impacted youth throughout Chicago’s neighborhoods most in need.

The new GCI report builds upon previous reports, “Lost: The Crisis Of Jobless and Out Of School Teens and Young Adults in Chicago, Illinois and the U.S.,” and, “A Lost Generation: The Disappearance of Teens and Young Adults from the Job Market in Cook County.” In contrast to previous reports, which examined 2014 employment data for 16 to 24 year olds in Chicago Community Areas, this new report examines employment data in Chicago Community Areas over time.

Highlights from the data report titled, “Youth Employment Data: Employment to Population Ratios for 16 to 19 and 20 to 24 Year Olds by Chicago Community Area, 2005-2009 to 2010-2014,” for 16 to 19 year olds include:

• The Near South Side and Burnside had the largest percentage point increases from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 in employment to population ratios for 16 to 19 year olds in which the Near South Side increased 24.3 and Burnside increased 28 percentage points.
• The South Side communities with the largest percentage point increases of employment to population ratio for 20 to 24 year olds from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 were Oakland (+4.8), Armour Square (+4.1), Englewood (+3.7), Kenwood (+2.6) and Washington Heights (+.4)
• The West and Southwest Side Community Areas with the largest percentage point increases of employment to population ratio for 20 to 24 year olds from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 were McKinley Park (-16.9), Clearing (-14.5), East Garfield Park (-13.9), Gage Park (-12.6), and the Lower West Side (-10.7).

For 20 to 24 Year olds:

• The largest percentage point increases in employment to population ratios for 20 to 24 year olds from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 for West Side Community Community Areas were Humboldt Park (+4), Hermosa (+5.6), West Garfield Park (+3), the Near West Side (+4), and West Town (+5).
• The North Side Community Areas with the largest percentage point increases of employment to population ratio for 20 to 24 year olds from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 included the Near North Side (+6.7), Lincoln Park (+6.6), Uptown (+2.7), and North Park (+3.1).
• The largest percentage point increases in employment to population ratios for 20 to 24 year olds from 2005-2009 to 2010-2014 for South Side Community Areas were Fuller Park (-19.1), Oakland (-25.4), Douglas (-14.4), Grand Boulevard (-12.3), Kenwood (-12.5), South Shore (-9.4), Hyde Park (-10.5), and Englewood (-10.6).

We are excited that the Chicago Tribune continues its interest in this very important issue. We welcome others to continue their use of our reports for advocacy, grant writing, and further research to improve the quality of life in our cities and regions.