05/04/2024

News

California Could Rein in Tesla Rebates that Mostly Go to Wealthy

California’s incentives to purchase electric vehicles are under attack, as data shows most of the money goes to consumers who earn twice the national average yet collect cash rebates on Tesla Motors luxury models.

Read More

Still Moving to Texas: The 2014 Metropolitan Population Estimates

Texas continues to dominate major metropolitan area growth. Among the 53 major metropolitan areas (with more than 1 million population), Texas cities occupied three of five top positions in population growth, and four of the top 10 (Figure 1).

Read More

Employees Working Fewer Hours Due to Obamacare: Survey

A new survey by the Society of Human Resource Management released Tuesday found about 14 percent of businesses have reduced part-time hours and another 6 percent plan to do so. Employers are reducing hours to avoid Obamacare’s employer mandate, which requires companies to provide health insurance to all workers that work 30 or more hours a week.

Read More

The Evolving Geography of Asian America: Suburbs are New High-Tech Chinatowns

As of 2012, 18 of the 20 most heavily Asian communities were suburban, all but one of them are in California. Not surprisingly quite a few are the smaller cities of Silicon Valley, where Asians constitute roughly half of all tech employees. Cupertino, a city of 59,700 that is home to Apple’s headquarters, takes the title of the most Asian city in the U.S., with a population that was 65% Asian as of 2012, up from 45.9% in 2000. Other suburban cities around the Bay that are majority Asian include No. 2 Milpitas (64.5% Asian), Daley City, Sunnyvale, Fremont , Santa Clara and Union City. Of them, only Daley City and Milpitas were majority Asian in 2000.

Read More

Two New Research Papers That Could Upend Our Understanding of Economic Inequality

One new paper, being presented this week as part of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, suggests the rising share of capital income can be explained entirely by housing. The second paper, presented at the same event, shows that political support for redistribution is not increasing in the U.S., even as inequality rises.

Read More

How Much (Or Little) The Middle Class Makes, In 30 U.S. Cities

What do families in the middle of the income distribution actually make in cities around the United States?

Read More

California’s Social Priorities

These data show that California needs to address significant, and growing social priorities, including significant improvement in adult educational rates at the high school and post-secondary level, increasing employment opportunities at a rate sufficient to serve past and forecast population growth, and reducing the state’s inequality and very high poverty rates.

Research & Studies
Read More

California’s Social Priorities, A New Report

California has achieved a great deal since 1970, including much cleaner air, water and more effective resource stewardship notwithstanding a population increase from approximately 19.9 million in 1970 to over 38 million by 2014. 2 Nevertheless, the state continues to face significant, and in many cases increasingly adverse educational and social equity challenges.

Read More

California Will See Slow Population Growth, Big Latino Gains

California’s population will continue to grow over the next 45 years, but very slowly, a new projection by the state’s demographers reveals, with Latinos and Asian-Americans providing virtually all growth and the white population shrinking dramatically.

Slow website
Read More

Racial Wealth Gaps: What a Difference 25 Years Doesn’t Make

The findings are the latest to show that while America’s economy is finally picking up steam again six years after the Great Recession, many black and Hispanic Americans—and indeed, much of the nation’s middle-class—are being left behind.

Read More

Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis

No question, inequality is extremely high from a historical perspective – worrisomely so. But a new analysis, by Stephen J. Rose of George Washington University, adds an important wrinkle to the story: Income inequality has not actually risen since the financial crisis began.

Read More

The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids

This may come as a shock to those of us who still associate homeschooling with fundamentalists eager to shelter their kids from the evils of the secular state. But it turns out that homeschooling has grown more mainstream over the last few years. According to the most recent statistics, the share of school-age kids who were homeschooled doubled between 1999 and 2012, from 1.7 to 3.4 percent. And many of those new homeschoolers come from the tech community.

Read More

Poverty Disparity Emerges as Major Issue in California

Some lawmakers represent areas where poverty is a central part of constituents’ daily lives. In some legislative districts, poverty rates are more than double the state average of 16.6 percent, according to the U.S. Census’ most recent American Community Survey. In others, the poverty rates are barely a quarter of the California average.

Slow website
Read More

The US Cities Where Hispanics are Doing the Best Economically

Given the diminished possibilities of buying a home or finding a decent job in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Latinos have been flocking to the suburban periphery that encompasses much of adjacent Riverside and San Bernardino counties, also known as the Inland Empire, which ranks second in our survey. From 2000 through 2013, the Latino population in the area soared 74%, compared to a 15% population gain for Los Angeles.

Read More

Government Work Declines in California, but Is On the Rise Elsewhere

With the trends moving in opposite directions, Texas now has a larger share of its workforce in government jobs than California. With a civilian workforce of just over 13 million, about 14.3% of all working Texans have government jobs.

Read More