Throughout this study we emphasize the four major racial-ethnic groups (defined by the Census Bureau) that dominate the New York City area.  Most data which the Census Bureau breaks down into racial-ethnic categories now includes "multiracial" people (those who mark two or more ethnic groups on their census form), as well as groups very sparsely present around here.  They include Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and American Indians and Eskimos.  All these groups are too small to be analyzed in this study.  Racial-ethnic categories from the Census Bureau always contain two listings for Whites: all Whites, including Hispanics calling themselves white, and "non-Hispanic Whites."  We include the latter category, for reasons to be explained later.  Blacks, Asians, and other racial groups are not similarly divided in most cases.  So our four major racial-ethnic categories are all Blacks, all Hispanics, non Hispanic Whites, and all Asians.

Later in this study racial-ethnic distribution is presented block-by-block for The Bronx.  Here we see more general trends:  Blacks seem to be migrating to the better-off areas in the extreme northeast of The Bronx, while their numbers are not increasing at all in the poorer areas of the South Bronx.  In the rest of the City also, Blacks seem to be moving away from their core areas, toward the periphery.  By contrast, Hispanics are extending their dominance in their core areas, particularly the largest one in North Manhattan-West Bronx.  Non Hispanic Whites are continuing their withdrawal into their enclaves of mid-Manhattan, west and south Brooklyn, north Queens, and southern Staten Island.  If trends continue, twenty years from now there will not be a single zipcode in The Bronx with a white majority.  Asians too seem to prefer the other boroughs to The Bronx.  Their movement due east from lower Manhattan is particularly striking in these maps.

Dot-density maps show dramatically just where in our area the major nationalities reside.  As we shall see, Dominicans make up the largest immigrant community and they are concentrated in the west Bronx and north Manhattan.  Central Americans, Jamaicans, and, surprisingly, Black Africans seem to prefer The Bronx.  But not Mexicans, Haitians, or Guyanese.  Among White ethnics, Italians are holding their own only in the east Bronx, and Irish are a dwindling presence.  Northern Brooklyn hosts most Poles and southern Brooklyn most Russians, while most other White ethnics seem to prefer mid Manhattan.  Albanians are a small but important group in the north Bronx.

Recent immigration is concentrated in the Hispanic areas of northern Manhattan , the Russian and Polish areas at the two ends of Brooklyn, and the Asian-Hispanic areas of  north Queens.  In some of these areas there is much ebb and flow: people may live a few years in New York, then return to an area like the Dominican Republic, then come back....Such frequent and hard-to-predict population movement complicates all social policies and demographic projections.  Linguistic isolation is one of the surest results of immigration ebb and flow.  In The Bronx, linguistic isolation should be the easiest to deal with, since almost all those with incomplete knowledge of English are Spanish speakers.  For Queens, there are dozens of languages to deal with.
 

Since children will be emphasized in the section on poverty, it is important to see their distribution throughout the zipcodes.  Note how "young" the south Bronx is, especially compared to mid Manhattan.  And in the areas with the highest percentage of kids, the greatest proportion of kids live in single mother households.  But especially in the south Bronx, the proportion of kids living with both parents is rising.  This encouraging trend may not extend to the better off Black areas of the northeast Bronx.

As a transition to the next section, note that in most female-headed families, somebody has a job; often two or more household members.  But there are areas where more than a third of female-headed families have no job-holders.  They seem to be in predominantly Hispanic zipcodes.   Note also that from here on, most of the maps will include "benchmark" figures for the whole of New York State, the whole of New York City, and all The Bronx.  These figures can allow some judgment of what is "normal" for each item.
 

2.  THE LABOR FORCE

Here we consider two ends of the spectrum: full time workers (we indicate their median earnings), and the proportion of adults not in the labor force.  Both categories are broken down by racial-ethnic category and by gender.  Benchmark figures show us that for a given category there is little difference between The Bronx , New York City, and New York State.  Within each racial category,  differences in earnings between male and female full-time workers are not as great as one might think, though a much greater proportion of men work full time.  But Hispanic earnings are significantly lower than those for non-Hispanic Whites.  Note also that non-Hispanic White workers have the highest earnings in areas where they predominate.  For the other ethnic groups, the opposite is true.

3.  EDUCATION AND OTHER SOCIAL INDICATORS

The advantage of a college degree is clear and does not need to be elaborated here.  On the other hand, adults who lack a high school diploma are among the most economically vulnerable.  A disproportionately large proportion of Hispanic adults are in this category.  Non-Hispanic Whites are the least likely to lack a high school diploma and, as we have seen before, areas with the greatest White population are the most educationally favored, while Hispanics, Blacks and Asians suffer most in the areas where they predominate.  Finally, note that college and high school graduation rates have risen in recent decades, so the younger Hispanic population should be educationally favored over the older White population.  However, the benchmark figures show just the opposite.  Foreign schooling and language problems may explain some of the deficiencies in education rates for Hispanics.

Here are four other maps presenting other social issues.  "Population movement" refers to those moving into their current dwelling in the past five years.  It is clear what a low rate of movement means, but the highest rates are hard to interpret. They include moving in from the floor below, and also from the other side of the world.  "No phone" is usually associated with isolated and deprived areas.  Fortunately, the figure is declining everywhere.  The crowding associated with more than one person per room seems highest in areas of recent Hispanic and Asian immigration.  Rents are lowest in the South Bronx and Harlem, but paradoxically, the people there may find their $400 rents more burdensome than the $1500 rents paid by mid Manhattanites.
 

4.  POVERTY

The alarmingly high poverty rate for children justifies concentrating on them.  The maps show poverty levels for 2000 (technically speaking, for the year 1999), and rates of change over the past decade.   Note the decline in the rates of poverty, extreme poverty, and baby poverty in the poorest parts of  the South Bronx and Harlem.  Unfortunately,  in adjacent areas poverty seems to be trending upward.  Benchmark figures for most categories highlight the high poverty rate in The Bronx.   Differences in family structure are clearly a key to explaining child poverty.    But what about racial-ethnic differences.  Here the poverty rates for single mother families with kids are presented for each ethnic group, followed by the rates for married couple families.  Follow the sequence carefully, to see the relationship among area, ethnicity, and family structure with respect to childhood poverty.
 

Finally, the puzzling relationship between immigration and poverty.  In The Bronx, considerably fewer citizen immigrants are below poverty than native born Americans.  Will their native-born children become much poorer?  Is immigration policy (not admitting the unskilled) the key in lowered poverty rates?  Are many illegal aliens included in the figures we have mapped?
 

We want your comments and suggestions.  Please contact The Bronx Data Center through EMAIL:  bosworth@lehman.cuny.edu

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