The most successful blacks and Hispanics are more likely to have poor neighbors than are whites, according to a new analysis of Census data.

The average affluent black and Hispanic household — defined in the study as earning more than $75,000 a year — lives in a poorer neighborhood than the average lower-income non-Hispanic white household that makes less than $40,000 a year.

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Affluent blacks are more exposed to poverty than the average non-Hispanic white in all but two of the top 50 metro areas with the most black households: Las Vegas and Riverside, Calif.

"Newer growth is less segregated," says Roderick Harrison, sociologist at Howard University and at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "People are coming into neighborhoods that have not become characterized as black or white or Hispanic. They're moving in on a more equal footing."

Read more at USA Today, or Hispanic Business.

This article was previously available at livingstondaily.com.

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.

Half of African Americans ages 18-25 consider themselves to be well-informed about the Social Security system. When compared to their older counterparts, however, these youngest African American adults have more correct information about the big-picture impacts of the Social Security system than about various details of the system's operations, e.g., age(s) at which one becomes eligible, how Social Security taxes are spent. Perhaps in part because of the large number of years between their current ages and the eligibility age(s) for Social Security, 18- to 25-year-old African Americans are less likely to view as major problems and more likely to view as minor problems known demographic and labor market factors that will impinge upon the system's solvency before their retirement years. These youngest adults also are more supportive than their older counterparts of selected reform proposals that could reduce the amounts that retirees receive in benefits from the Social Security system.

Perhaps most importantly, when compared to older African Americans, these youngest African American adults are simultaneously less likely to believe that Social Security will be their major source of retirement income and less likely to have begun accumulating other forms of retirement savings. ere may be good reasons for this behavior, such as indebtedness from post-secondary education. It does not bode well, however, for the financial security of members of this age cohort during retirement.

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies National Opinion Poll of African American Adults About Social Security and Wealth identified these and other findings. The poll, conducted in late 2005, surveyed 850 African Americans ages 18 and older. is fact sheet features the major findings about African Americans ages 18-25, who constitute 18 percent of the survey sample.

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Publication date: June 2006

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 (FMWA), which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, January 10th and taken up by the U.S. Senate the week of January 22nd, will raise the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour by 2009. The minimum would be raised in three steps: to $5.85 within 60 days of becoming law, then to $6.55 a year after that, and finally to $7.25 the following year.

How many workers might the Act affect if it is passed this year and if the minimum is then raised to $7.25 by 2009? How might the effects differ by race and ethnicity?

These important questions have no simple answers. Informative estimates can nevertheless be produced through analysis of the hourly wages that workers reported in the most recent Annual Demographic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), which was conducted in March 2006. Workers who reported earnings between $5.15 (the current federal minimum wage) and $5.85 might be affected by the increase that the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 would implement within 60 days of its passage; those earning between $5.85 and $6.55, and between $6.55 and $7.25 might benefit from the second and third increases proposed in the Act. Workers who reported earnings greater than the proposed federal minimum wage of $7.25 by 2009 may also see their wages increase by that time, as some states implement planned increases in their minimum wages that exceed the federal minimum.