Many people are aware that the economic gaps between the wealthiest Americans and others have widened in recent years. The same is true for the gap between the richest and poorest American communities. A recent study supplied by the Economic Innovation Group breaks down its findings into areas as small as individual zip codes.
The researchers determined that from 2010 to 2013, employment in the nation’s most prosperous neighborhoods in the U.S. surged by more than a fifth. But in the poorest neighborhoods, the number of jobs declined sharply, with 1 in 10 businesses shuttering their doors. In these same neighborhoods, more than one half of adults don’t have a job and nearly a quarter lack a high school diploma.
By contrast, in the nation’s most prosperous zip codes, only six percent of adults dropped out of high school and sixty five percent are employed. As reported in the New York Times, to come up with rankings for their Distressed Communities Index, the analysts focused on 7 factors, including home vacancy rates, adults in the workforce, poverty, changes in employment and in the number of businesses.
Among the most distress communities are Camden, New Jersey, Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio, Gary, Indiana and Hartford, Connecticut.
