Life Expectancy Shrinks for Less-Educated Whites in U.S.

The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance. [Read more]

EVENT: Transporting Black Men to Good Jobs

Transporting Black Men to Good Jobs: Transportation Infrastructure, Transportation Jobs, and Public Transit By race and gender, black men have the highest unemployment rate. Among male workers with a high-school diploma, black men have the lowest average hourly wage. This briefing will show how investments in transportation infrastructure, transportation jobs, and public transit can be an effective way to increase black male employment in good jobs. Wednesday, September 26, 2012 8:30 - 10:00 am Rayburn House Office Building - Gold Room (2168) 45 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20515 Coffee and a light breakfast will be available. This event is open to the public and free, but please REGISTER HERE. Presenters Algernon Austin Director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy Economic Policy Institute Jeff Brooks Administrative Vice President and Director of the Transit Division Transport Workers Union of America Anita M. Hairston Senior Associate for Transportation Policy PolicyLink Michelle Holder Senior Labor Market Analyst Community Service Society of New York Brian Turner Executive Director Transportation Learning Center Moderator Linda Harris Director of Youth Policy CLASP

Segregated Schooling by Race and Class Increases

In spite of declining residential segregation for black families and large-scale movement to the suburbs in most parts of the country, school segregation remains very high for black students.  It is also double segregation by both race and poverty.  Nationwide, the typical black student is now in a school where almost two out of every three classmates (64%) are low-income, nearly double the level in schools of the typical white or Asian student (37% and 39%, respectively).  New York, Illinois, and Michigan consistently top the list of the most segregated states for black students.  Among the states with significant black enrollments, blacks are least likely to attend intensely segregated schools in Washington, Nebraska, and Kansas. [Read more]

Four questions for Mitt Romney

(1) Under the federal tax code, a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax because the standard deduction and exemptions reduce their taxable income to zero. The Tax Policy Center has explained that this reflects components of “the basic progressive income tax structure that intend to exempt subsistence levels of income from tax and to adjust for differences in ability to pay based on family size."

Do you disagree with that approach? Do you believe that this family’s tax burden is too low? If so, how would you raise it?  Eliminate the deduction for children?  Raise marginal rates? Make the tax code less progressive? [Read more]

Children exposed to violence declines

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4472

Difference in African-American and Standard-American Sign Languages

Carolyn McCaskill remembers exactly when she discovered that she couldn’t understand white people. It was 1968, she was 15 years old, and she and nine other deaf black students had just enrolled in an integrated school for the deaf in Talledega, Ala.

When the teacher got up to address the class, McCaskill was lost.

“I was dumbfounded,” McCaskill recalls through an interpreter. “I was like, ‘What in the world is going on?’”

The teacher’s quicksilver hand movements looked little like the sign language McCaskill had grown up using at home with her two deaf siblings and had practiced at the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind, just a few miles away. It wasn’t a simple matter of people at the new school using unfamiliar vocabularly; they made hand movements for everyday words that looked foreign to McCaskill and her fellow black students. [Read more]

Mitt Romney: Do you believe in a safety net?

(1) Under the federal tax code, a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax because the standard deduction and exemptions reduce their taxable income to zero. The Tax Policy Center has explained that this reflects components of "the basic progressive income tax structure that intend to exempt subsistence levels of income from tax and to adjust for differences in ability to pay based on family size."

Do you disagree with that approach? Do you believe that this family’s tax burden is too low? If so, how would you raise it?  Eliminate the deduction for children?  Raise marginal rates? Make the tax code less progressive? [Read more]

Single-black-father families see declines in poverty

"By family type, for all families with children under 18 years old, only families headed by single¹ fathers showed a real decline. This decline appears to be driven primarily by a large drop in the poverty rate for families headed by single black men." [Read more]

More Upward Educational Mobility in Britain

"British schools now do a better job than American schools of lifting students up the social ladder, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report published Tuesday. In Britain, a student whose parents never graduated from high school has a 60 percent chance of attending college, while in the United States the odds are just 29 percent, one of the lowest levels among the 34 countries with advanced economies that make up the O.E.C.D., which is based in Paris." --NYTimes.

Who is to Blame for Black Unemployment?

“The federal government—the president and Congress working together—and the Federal Reserve can positively or negatively affect unemployment for blacks and in general,” Austin says. “We need to talk about how do we build an economy where everyone who wants a job can find a job; how do we create an economy than can produce full employment for blacks?” [Read more]