“Place matters.
This simple concept has never been better understood than it is today.
The American Dream is predicated on the idea that anyone from any background can climb to the highest rungs of the economic ladder. But there is a growing body of evidence that the more time an individual spends living in a distressed community — especially at childhood — the worse that individual’s lifetime chances of achieving economic stability or success.”
-Economic Innovation Group
The Economic Innovation Group, a Washington, D.C. area think-tank, conducted a study to examine the dimensions of economic distress across the country. In it’s study, the EIG found that analyzing distress at a zip code level revealed a spatial inequality — or an unequal distribution of resources — among neighboring zip codes. According to the study, a number of factors signal a community in distress, including:
- No high school degree
- Housing vacancy rate
- Adults not working
- Poverty rate
- Median income ratio
- Change in employment
- Change in business establishments
“The divide between prosperity and distress lie along economic specialization.
Prosperous large cities that specialize in innovation-intensive, technology-based and high-end service industries,” are able to attract more people back into the workforce, says the EIG.
Distressed cities, on the other hand, struggle to transition from industrial to a knowledge based economies. If not having a high school degree, abandoned homes, high rates of unemployment, underemployment, low wages and lack of success for small businesses are factors that lead to distress ; how, then, can members of those communities gain the resources, skills and experience needed to escape poverty and overcome their distress?
economic migration
The Great Migration offers us insight into this pressing question. The largest internal movement of any group in the history of America, The Great Migration represents the struggle of a people against despairing conditions — such as poverty, persecution, bigotry and racism — in their strivings to overcome distress and obtain prosperity.
Between 1920 and 1970 nearly 5 million Black Americans migrated away from the South in search for economic opportunity. Faced with the persecution under Jim Crow; an ailing agricultural economy due to automation; and government policy discouraging agricultural production, Black migrants found themselves trapped in increasingly distressing conditions. Driven towards industrializing cities in the North and military towns on the West Coast, Black migrants sought relief and a chance at a better life. In the 1940s, alone, 1.4 million Black Americans migrated out of the South in search of freedom from oppression and economic opportunity.
But demand slowed and Black America found themselves in a new crisis shortly after the second world war ended.
people of no nation
The once booming economy that gave rise to the Black migrant was ending; and ensuing crises in housing and labor led to growing civil unrest. Federal policy to transition the economy to post war production, namely changes in output to consumer products from wartime machinery, enabled corporate industry transformation in accommodating returning war veterans.
Black migrants who once found refuge in industrialized cities were beginning to become trapped in worsening conditions that would soon rival and worsen from their previous Jim Crow conditions.
a new crisis
At the same time Blacks were migrating in record numbers, a new set of U.S. policies were beginning to establish Black Americans as an underclass.
The Federal Housing Authority, along with the Home Owners Loan Corporation, began subsidizing ‘White only’ suburban communities while barring Black families from homeownership. Divestment in urban centers; shifting demand; advances in emerging technology; relocation of thriving job markets and deteriorating infrastructure heightened turmoil in major cities. As Black communities began to be disconnected from the promise of prosperity, they were, once again, beginning to become entrenched in the despairing conditions of poverty.
Although the Civil Rights Bill, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 sought to reverse economic discrimination, the distressing conditions experienced throughout the 20th Century have had a lasting effect on Black communities.
A study conducted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that three of four neighborhoods marked ‘hazardous’ in the 1930s were still struggling in 2018. Public policy subsidizing suburban communities allowed White Americans to grab a hold of prosperity promised by the American Dream, while creating spatial inequalities throughout urban and suburban communities across the country.
The Great Migration had ended, but the hope for freedom and economic prosperity of millions of Black families continued.
war on poverty
According to ‘The War on Poverty after 50 Years’:
“US taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Yet progress against poverty…has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the ‘causes’ rather than mere ‘consequences’ the war on poverty has failed completely…Despite spending three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American revolution, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the war on poverty began.”
‘Live in poverty for years, or even generations, and the effects of poverty become entrenched,’ say researchers. According to new studies, people who experience poverty are at greater risk of exposure to mental disabilities. Studies show that disabling circumstances; such as violence, crime, and abuse, lead to mental disturbances which impact the quality of life for those living in poverty-stricken conditions. Evidence suggests these disturbances have lasting affects on individual mental health and may lead to community crisis and distress.
Debilitating harms help to normalize distressing behavior. Addiction, social dependency, low self-esteem, violence and abuse have an adverse impact on a person’s ability to mature a strong to sense of self-worth.
Erik Erikson theorized that a person’s psyche develops as it matures through several life stages. Starting in infancy, a person starts to engage with experiences that test their ability to adapt and socially mature. These experiences help to determine a person’s ability to lead a well and meaningful life. A person who becomes successful in overcoming their social stressors will likely develop a strong sense of self worth. However, obstacles poised by poverty challenge a person’s ability to overcome those stressors.
environmental conditioning
When we catch-up to the migrants of the Great Migration, we find them living in substandard housing, facing high rates of unemployment and fighting a deteriorating community infrastructure. Former Executive Director of the National Urban League, Whitney M. Young, Jr., describes these conditions:
If the Negro baby lives, the chances of losing his mother in childbirth are relatively high — the maternal mortality rate was four times as high as for white mothers in 1958.
The Nego baby comes into a family that lives in the city… in the Negro ghetto. It is a family that is larger than the white counterpart…and is jammed into housing that is dilapidated — quarters structurally unsound or unable to keep out cold, rain, snow, wind, rats, or pests. In other words, housing that is a danger to life or limb…with more mouths to feed, more bodies to clothe and more needs to satisfy, the Negro is forced to exist on a median income of $62 per week, just 55 percent of white family income.” ( ’To Be Equal’)
Black communities not only had to deal with dilapidated housing, economic distress, persecution, rising unemployment and substandard living conditions, they also had to contend with growing inner turmoil caused by debilitating social harms. Coping mechanisms — meant to regulate emotion — did little to challenge distressing conditions and, instead, created subversive realities that furthered delayed individual fulfillment. This discontent began to transfer from the conditions that created the distress onto people living in these conditions. These changing condition that made it possible to devalue personal self-worth and appreciate material prosperity.
overcoming poverty Induced trauma
If policies investing into commercial infrastructure remain unchanged, a legacy of economic migration leading to rising costs, decreasing purchasing power and increasing economic distress — experienced through the Great Migration - will continue to create greater obstacles for achieving economic stability and success.
As cities begin to shift under the pressures of gentrification, America still has to deal with policy promoting corporate wealth at the expense of poor and Black communities. The expansion of credit markets, subsequent increases to cost of living and rise in demand for consumer goods advances a policy created in the 1930s. The investment into a corporate infrastructure to retain war-time prosperity continuum continues a policy that challenges the ability to maintain economic stability at a community level, and individual ability to lead fulfilling lives — the real wealth of the American Dream.
wealth economies
Economic theory suggests demand is driven by quantity and price of goods and services. Research suggests, however, that modern demand for consumer goods may be driven by intrapersonal conflict created through war-time economics.
The main goal of restoring self-sufficiency in the American public — sought after in the War on Poverty — has failed. Diminished investments into community infrastructure and environmental instability due to war-time conflict have created psychological and social crises which drive demand. Lack of investment in systems that help a person achieve self-fulfillment and gain a quality sense of self-worth have contributed to the rise in consumerism driving demand for commercial goods. In a sense, current economic decisions are driven by psychological traumas and social stressors. Individuals less capable of resolving inner conflict are less capable of developing a strong sense of self-worth. Individuals who aren’t able to develop a sense of self-worth are less capable of making decisions that lead to a self-fulfilling life. People who lead unfulfilled lives are less likely to contribute to wealth creation.
If America is to capitalize 20th Century industrialization, it has to begin focusing on policy that enable individual success in each stage of life. Investment into a new set of policy that advances self-sufficiency as a means to wealth requires investment into vital community infrastructure to support individual wellbeing.
