Violence and crime plagues all corners of Chicago, and gentrification of this notoriously segregated city often causes even more tension in the streets. But demographic shifts in urban areas could be bringing a whole new wave of change. The 2010 census found that the number of black children living in Chicago was down 31 percent. Such changes are prompting city aldermen to come up with new Ward maps. To learn more about what these changes in population mean for inner city living Eight Forty-Eight's Richard Steele talked to David Bositis, senior political analyst of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

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While it is true that no ethnic group is showing signs of saving enough for retirement, one of the sad truths is that minorities in lower-wage jobs who need the most options for retirement savings have the fewest.

With Hispanics comprising the largest population and employee sector in San Antonio, this is not a good sign for wealth creation and better living standards here.

According to a 2009 report from the Hispanic Institute and Americans for Secure Retirement, only 25.6 percent of Hispanics are covered by employer-sponsored retirement plans, compared to 42.5 percent of whites and 40 percent of African Americans.

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At Fortune 500 companies, 65 percent of Hispanics participate in 401(k) plans, compared to 77 percent for whites. Seventy-two percent of Hispanics have saved less than $25,000, compared to 48 percent of whites, said Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research associate for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Many of the reasons are obvious, such as not making enough earnings to set aside any from each paycheck, Leigh said during a recent presentation to a National Press Foundation program in Washington, D.C.

Less obvious is the tendency for minorities to be uncomfortable with savings and investments, a matter worsened by the 2008-09 financial industry crisis. Minorities are less likely to sign up for paycheck direct deposit, much less retirement plans, Leigh said.

Read more at the San Antonio Express-News.

View / download Dr. Leigh's Powerpoint presentation at scribd.com.

A presentation on Obstacles to Saving for Retirement was given by Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh for the National Press Foundation's Retirement Issues 2011 forum on June 14, 2011. This presentation is available for download below. More presentations and information from this forum can be found at the National Press Foundation website.

African-Americans have migrated in significant numbers from the urban core to the suburbs and from large metropolitan parts of the North to the South in the past ten years. As states redraw political districts, the impact of their exodus is varied. Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania will each lose congressional seats. Lawmakers in some Republican-controlled states have created redistricting maps that dilute minority voting power by trying to concentrate African-Americans in a contained area so they can influence the outcome in as few districts as possible. In others, minorities claim the lines being drawn don’t accurately reflect the demographic shifts that in a fair process would result in more minority lawmakers.

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As David Bositis, senior research analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told BET.com, “individually they have relatively little influence, but together they can accomplish a lot. And as the population change evolves, “they can in effect become the governing majority.”

Read more at BET.

Where are hundreds of thousands of African-American children that used to live in some of the nation’s largest cities?

The Associated Press reports that Census data shows that the number, and percentage, of Black children living in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, as well as many other major urban areas, have been cascading downward for years.

Demographers say a number of factors are at play, such as increased use of birth control, but one may surprise. More young African-American couples have moved to the suburbs, for the usual reasons: more space, better schools and greater tranquility. That has reduced the number and percentage of black children in major cities, while the Black older population has remained steady.

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David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Black issue–oriented think tank, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and former Census Bureau demographer sees nothing wrong with the trend, and says cities will benefit.  "On one level, it is a big plus for the cities,” he told a reporter, “People without children are much cheaper than people with children. Especially young people. They are making very little in way of demands on city services."

Read more at BET.

A catastrophic flood emptied New Orleans of much of its black youth. Powerful social forces may be doing a similar thing to places like Harlem and Chicago's South Side.

Over the past decade, the inner-city neighborhoods that have served for generations as citadels of African-American life and culture have been steadily draining of black children.

Last year's census found that the number of black, non-Hispanic children living in New York City had fallen by 22.4 percent in 10 years. In raw numbers, that meant 127,058 fewer black kids living in the city of Jay Z and Spike Lee, even as the number of black adults grew slightly.

The same pattern has repeated from coast to coast. Los Angeles saw a 31.8 percent decline in its population of black children, far surpassing the 6.9 percent drop in black adults. The number of black children in Atlanta fell by 27 percent. It was down 31 percent in Chicago and 37.6 percent in Detroit. Oakland, Calif. saw a drop of 42.3 percent, an exodus that fell only 6 percentage points below the decline in flood-ravaged New Orleans.

Overall, the census found nearly a half-million fewer black children living in the 25 largest U.S. cities than there were a decade earlier. By comparison, the number of black adults living in big cities has hardly budged.

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"Face it: In a lot of suburbs, there was a distinct effort to keep blacks out," said David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and former Census Bureau demographer.

Those barriers have now been falling, he said, opening the door for blacks to follow in the footsteps of white families who had their own diaspora to the suburbs after World War II.

"More African Americans are going to college. There were big income gains during the Clinton administration," Bositis said. "Now they are moving to the suburbs where they have better schools ... They don't want their children in inner-city schools."

Read more at Google News, The Chicago Tribune, CBS News,  The Washington Examiner, St. Petersburg Times, Macon.com, Daily Herald, WFSB, KFMB , The Seattle Times, Kansas City Star, Santa Cruz Sentinel, The Daily Tribune (Oakland) and mlive.com.

A U.S. Census report reveals that since its last count 10 years ago, a growing number of blacks have migrated from major cities in the North in favor of locations in the South.

A prime example has been New York City, where the New York Times (NYT) reported recently that about 17 percent of the African-Americans who moved to the South from other states in the past decade moved from New York. Additionally, in information NYT attributed to a Queens College study, of the 44,474 people who left New York State in 2009, more than half, or 22,508, migrated to the South.

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David Bositis, a senior research associate at the D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said in a February Associated Press report that it has become a national political strategy for blacks to migrate from large urban cities in the North.

"Democrats want to spread out minorities. Republicans want to create white districts, or ones with a small enough minority population that it won't have an effect on the vote," Bositis was quoted as saying.

This article was previously available at The Washington Informer.

The racial/ethnic wealth gap in this country is both huge and persistent. The ratio between the median net worth of white households and African American households is nearly 7:1, while the white-Hispanic ratio is nearly 5:1 (Bucks, Kennickell, and Moore 2006). Despite increased awareness of these gaps, clear consensus has yet to emerge about the steps needed to narrow them. Some of this lack of consensus relates to a lack of understanding of the causes of this disparity.

This report explores the determinants of wealth and of the racial/ethnic disparities in asset and wealth accumulation. The narrative provides an overview of past research1 that has addressed this issue and highlights the most relevant findings. Its goal is to shed light on the causes of the racial/ethnic wealth gap and to provide answers to the question, “What’s race got to do with it?”

Available in PDF format only.

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With Virginia's black population at 20 percent and Rep. Bobby Scott still the state's only black congressman, there is a push on in the Old Dominion to increase black political clout.

The rub, though, is how to do it.

The General Assembly returned to Richmond Thursday to redraw the state's 11 congressional districts as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process. But with the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-run Senate at loggerheads over the question of black representation, lawmakers turned over the task of completing the new map to a small group of negotiators.

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"What are these black voters going to protect him from?" said David Bositis, of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "For that matter, just for ... democracy, you want a district where a candidate is unopposed?"

Read more at The Washington Examiner.

President Obama appears to be riding high. Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most-wanted man, has been killed under his leadership. He pulled off an “in your face” coo by producing his long-form birth certificate to silence billionaire Donald Trump. And although the economy is still struggling, it shows some signs of recovery.

Yet, it will be none of these accomplishments that many voters will consider when they go to the polls in 2012. In fact, race and political experts say the fact that President Obama is Black will still be a major factor in his re-election campaign and will likely even increase.

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But, major accomplishments will not likely be enough to deter those who look at the President primarily through the lens of his race, agrees David Bositis, spokesman for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank of racial politics.

“One would think that this would result in a serious increase in his poll numbers. One would hope that it would, but we’ll have to wait and see because if we don’t know that he’s an American, if we think that he graduated from Harvard as an affirmative action student even though he was president of the [Harvard] Law Review, you just can never tell,” says Bositis.

This article was previously available at The Seattle Medium.