HALVE THE GAP BY 2030 YOUTH DISCONNECTION IN AMERICA’S CITIES
LOS ANGELES METRO AREA CLOSE-UP
GAP IN YOUTH DISCONNECTION RATE ( PERCENTAGE POINTS )
KRISTEN LEWIS and SARAH BURD-SHARPS
3 201 : GAP
3 . 0 3
3 201 : GAP
7 . 5 1 2030 TARGET:
2030 TARGET:
7.9
15.2
Racial/ethnic groups
Neighborhood clusters
Patrick Nolan Guyer | CHIEF STATISTICIAN & CARTOGRAPHER Diana Tung | REPORT DESIGN TO DOWNLOAD THIS REPORT, PLEASE VISIT WWW.MEASUREOFAMERICA.ORG/HALVE-THE-GAP-2030
MEASURE OF AMERICA of the Social Science Research Council
15 YOUTH DISCONNECTION IN THE LOS ANGELES METRO AREA 5
126
14
138
118 118 27
210
Angeles Natl Forest
27 170
Burbank
Topanga State Park
5
Glendale
134
2
134
Pasadena
170
TOP
Los Angeles
West Los Angeles 1
3.1%
Santa Monica 10 187
187
1
710 19 2
Macarthur Park
90
5
405
PACIFIC OCEAN
Torrance
72
60
605
105
Watts, LA 90 42
72
26.4%
Carson
57 90
710
Long Beach 110
1 47
60
60
BOTTOM
213
1
66
10
42
110
39
Monterey Park
110
Gardena
Arcadia
110
90 39
91
605
Anaheim 72
22
91
55
Orange
22
DISCONNECTED YOUTH
Santa Ana
1.8% - 9.1%
405
55
241
Tustin
9.2% - 12.0% 1
12.1% - 15.1% 15.2% - 19.0%
Costa Mesa 261
Irvine
Newport Beach
19.1% - 36.5% 73
outside metro area landmark
N Santa Catalina Island
133
0
5
10 miles 1
5
241
LO S A N G E L E S
101
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About the Los Angeles Metro Area Close-Up This document is an excerpt from Halve the Gap by 2030: Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities. It portrays in detail the landscape of youth disconnection in the Los Angeles Metro Area, with a map of the metro area; identification of the neighborhood highs and lows; youth disconnection rates by race, ethnicity, and gender; and key well-being indicators to provide context.
Who Are Disconnected Youth: Definition and Data Sources Disconnected youth are people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working. Young people in this age range who are working or in school part-time or who are in the military are not considered disconnected. Youth disconnection rates in this report are calculated by Measure of America using employment and enrollment data from the 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) of the US Census Bureau. For further details, see the Note on Methods and Definitions. Several official data sources exist that can be used for calculating youth disconnection. As a result, researchers working with different data sets, or different definitions of what constitutes disconnection, arrive at different numbers for this indicator. Measure of America uses the ACS for four reasons: (1) it is reliable and updated annually; (2) it allows for calculations by state and metro area as well as by the more granular census-defined neighborhood clusters within metro areas; (3) it includes young people who are in group quarters, such as juvenile or adult correctional facilities, supervised medical facilities, and college dorms; and (4) it counts students on summer break as being enrolled in school.
M EASU REOFAME RI CA
Human development is about improving people’s well-being and expanding their choices and opportunities to live freely chosen lives of value. The period of young adulthood is critical to developing the capabilities required for a full and flourishing life: knowledge and credentials, social skills and networks, a sense of mastery and agency, an understanding of one’s strengths and preferences, and the ability to handle stressful events and regulate one’s emotions, to name just a few. Measure of America is thus concerned with youth disconnection because it stunts human development, closing off some of life’s most rewarding and joyful paths and leading to a future of limited horizons and unrealized potential.
www.m easureofamerica. org
LO S A N G E L E S
Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, provides easy-to-use yet methodologically sound tools for understanding well-being and opportunity in the United States and to stimulate fact-based dialogue about issues we all care about: health, education, and living standards. The root of this work is the human development and capabilities approach, the brainchild of Harvard professor and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
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KEY WELL-BEING INDICATORS HD Index: 5.40 out of 10 HD Index ranking: 13th out of 24 Total population: 12,945,140 Adult unemployment rate: 9.9% Adults with at least bachelor’s degree: 31.0% Poverty rate: 17.0% Youth unemployment rate (ages 16–24): 22.9% School enrollment rate (ages 16–24): 64.5% Sources: Measure of America 2013-2014 and U.S. Census Bureau, 2011.
How Do Racial and Ethnic Groups Compare to Each Other and to Their National Counterparts?
Youth Disconnection by Race and Ethnicity The tremendous variation in youth disconnection rates by race and ethnicity in Los Angeles closely mirrors the differences among the groups at the national level. Asian Americans have the lowest disconnection rate, 7.8 percent, followed by whites at 10.5 percent. The Latino rate is 17.2 percent, and the African American rate is 22.5 percent, or more than one in every five African American teens and young adults.
Los Angeles United States ASIAN 7.8% AMERICANS 7.6% WHITES
LATINOS
Youth Disconnection by Gender While nationally young men outnumber young women in terms of youth disconnection, in Los Angeles the differences are not statistically HALV E T HE GA P B Y 2 0 3 0 | Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities
AFRICAN AMERICANS
10.5% 11.7% 17.2% 17.9% 22.5% 22.5% 0
5
10
15
20
25
LO S A N G E L E S
The Los Angeles metro area, made of up of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, is the country’s second largest city and home to one in every three Californians. The youth disconnection rate is 14.6 percent, a rate which is on par with the national average and gives Los Angeles a fifteenth-place ranking among the country’s twenty-five most populous metro areas. In terms of absolute numbers, an astonishing 258,000 teens and young are not working and not in school. Compared with California’s three other major metro areas, Los Angeles struggles with youth connection far more than San Francisco and San Diego but has a better rate than Riverside–San Bernardino.
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The Los Angeles metro area is made up of eighty-four neighborhood clusters. An astonishing 23.3 percentage points separates neighborhoods with the highest and lowest youth disconnection rates. In West Los Angeles, only 3.1 percent of young people are cut off from school and work; in Watts, the rate is more than eight times that, 26.4 percent. In other big cities in California, the distance between the most and least connected neighborhood clusters is narrower—12.2 percentage points in Riverside-San Bernardino, 15.2 percentage points in San Diego, and 19.7 percentage points in San Francisco. Two features stand out in relation to the three neighborhood clusters with the highest rates of youth disconnection. The first is that they are near one another pointing to a concentration of disadvantage and a geographical isolation from parts of the city where connection rates are higher. The second is that these areas are largely Latino and African American, highlighting the difficulties young people in low-income, majority minority neighborhoods face in connecting to educational and employment opportunities. At least seven in ten residents of these communities are Latino, and in Watts, seven in ten are Latino and the remaining three are African American. As is the case with the neighborhoods with high rates of disconnection, the most-connected communities are also located, if not next to one another, at least near other fairly well-connected neighborhoods, a concentration of advantage and access that benefits the area’s young people. West Los Angeles, where youth disconnection is the lowest in the metro area, includes the campus of the University of California Los Angeles, a magnet for students who are inherently “connected” to higher education if not employment as well.
30 25 20 15 10
14.7
5 0
7.4
11.7
Racial/ethnic Neighborhood groups clusters
Most Connected Neighborhood Clusters NEIGHBORHOOD
RATE OF YOUTH DISCONNECTION (%)
West Los Angeles, CA
3.1
Irvine, CA
4.9
Newport Beach and Laguna Hills, Orange County, CA
5.2
Least Connected Neighborhood Clusters NEIGHBORHOOD
HALV E T HE GA P B Y 2 0 3 0 | Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities
23.3
RATE OF YOUTH DISCONNECTION (%)
Vernon Central, Los Angeles, CA
22.6
Downtown Los Angeles, CA
25.0
Watts, Los Angeles, CA
26.4
LO S A N G E L E S
Youth Disconnection by Neighborhood
Halve the Gap in Los Angeles GAP IN YO U T H D IS C O NN ECT IO N RATE ( P ERC ENTAG E P O IN T S )
significant. Roughly 129,000 young men and 129,000 young women are neither working nor in school. Because of Los Angeles’ large size, these are the second highest numbers after New York.
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