VIRUS VICTIMS | Race, Housing, Occupation

Ibram X. Kendi, in “Why Don’t We Know Who the Coronavirus Victims Are?(The Atlantic, April 1, 2020), provides some basic evidence that African Americans are disproportionately victims of the disease. However, in many states we just don't know. He begs for more attention to including demographic data in death statistics.

Kendi cites data showing that African Americans are 14.6 percent of the Illinois population, but are 28 percent of confirmed cases of the coronavirus (Latinos, however, are a much smaller percentage of deaths than in the population). In Michigan, blacks are 14 percent of the population but 41 percent of the victims. An even more striking disparity has occurred in Milwaukee, where blacks account for 26 percent of the population but are half of the reported cases and 81 percent of deaths. Here is a starter table.

For New York State, the blacks represent 28 percent of victims of COVID-19, but are 22 percent of the population. Hispanics are 34 percent of the victims and 29 percent of the population. (Victims are 60.7 percent male and 39.2 percent female, a difference that holds nationwide.)

In New York City, the higher-income areas of Manhattan are largely virus-free whereas above 125th Street the numbers shift to higher rates of infection. 

Kendi's article notes that Latinos are a much smaller percentage of deaths in Illinois than their proportion of the population. In fact, the disparity between deaths among black victims of the virus and the population is erased in Illinois by the opposite relationship among Latinos, i.e., fewer deaths relative to their share of the population. If the two percentages are added together they are both 35 percent. A worrisome feature for Chicago is that its ability to handle a surge of coronavirus cases is limited by its pre-virus financial problems.

However, on Long Island, in both Nassau and Suffolk County, deaths in Latino communities are much higher than in the rest of the population. 

Not in the article are some possible explanations of the disparities. Here are some I can think of:

• Commute. The trip to work is likely to be on public transit in urban areas, buses or commuter trains.
• Occupation. African Americans in Illinois are well represented in occupations that bring them into contact with carriers of the virus, in hospitals, nursing homes, and in health care aide roles; as delivery personnel and drivers; and in food and drug stores.
• Housing. Intergenerational living, with three generations under the same roof, is common, as both a cultural and an income-related factor.
• Health. The largest numbers of comorbidities with the COVID-19 virus are connected with hypertension and diabetes. Early and severe hypertension among African Americans has been tied to salt sensitivity. Obesity is another risk factor for both hypertension and diabetes.

JUSTICE | Teenagers in Prison? Bad for the Economy

About 71,000 teenagers are incarcerated (2010 data), i.e., 2.3 per thousand teenagers (10-19). The USA spends $6 billion a year keeping juveniles in prison. The average direct cost of keeping a teenager in prison is $88,000 per year.

When teenagers are put in prison, two effects follow:

• They are less likely to finish high school.
• They are more likely to return to incarceration as an adult - recidivism is high.

So a community that is tough on its teenagers and is quick to incarcerate is likely to be a community where fewer high school students graduate and more adults are in prison. This is a dual drag on their economy.

Alternatives to incarceration for offenses by teenagers reduce the effects described above. These alternatives include

• Electronic monitoring.
• Well-enforced curfews. (As in Illinois.)

The authors of the above research, Anna Aizer and Joseph Doyle, Jr., do not place a value on the deterrent effect of incarceration, because recent evidence suggests that this effect is weak.

The research is in NBER Working Paper #19102, available from www.nber.org/papers.

Manhattan Outpaces LA and Cook Counties, 3Q11

Numbers just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics allow us to track the relative economic performance of large counties through the third quarter of 2011. This week for the first time we have the dollars associated with payroll jobs in each area.As a model for understanding the numbers, let's take  the three largest counties - Los Angeles, Cook County and Manhattan (New York County). Los Angeles County has the most jobs - 3.9 million of them, 3.0 percent of all jobs in the United States. Cook County is second with 2.4 million jobs, 1.8 percent of all U.S. jobs. Finally, Manhattan has 2.3 million jobs, 1.8 percent of all U.S. jobs.  The three counties together have 6.6 percent of all U.S. jobs.
The relative size of the largest counties are shown in this BLS chart posted Friday, March 30. Los Angeles County encompasses the City of Los Angeles and Cook County encompasses the City of Chicago. New York City is the only U.S. city that includes more than one county. New York County is coterminous with the Borough of Manhattan, which is not the largest borough by number of residents but includes approximately three-fourths of the Gross City Product.  

Table 1. Employment in Large Counties

  USA and Three Largest Counties

    September 2011('000)
United States          130,524.7

 1.Los Angeles, Calif.    3,872.5       

 2.Cook, Ill.             2,402.7

 3.New York, N.Y.         2,332.5

Source: Data for this and the next four tables: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, QCEW report for September (3Q) 2011, March 28, 2012.

It is already known that Manhattan grew jobs at the fastest rate, 2.6 percent, during the year ending September 2011. This is a full percentage point faster than the United States as a whole. Cook County was also above the national average for job growth but Los Angeles grew jobs only half as fast as the nation. (See Table 2.) 

 Table 2. Increase in Employment

  USA and Three Largest Counties  

  September 2010-11 ('000 and %)
United States     2,040.9 (1.6%)

New York, N.Y.       60.6 (2.6%)         

Cook, Ill.           48.5 (2.0%) 

Los Angeles, Calif.  31.1 (0.8%)

The question that the new data on average wages help us to answer is - what happened to average salaries in the counties? Did job growth reflect a growth of less-well-paid jobs, or was the job growth occurring in better-paid industries? The average wage in the third quarter of 2011 was $916 a week in the United States and it was $1,647 in Manhattan, $1,047 in Cook County and $1,026 in Los Angeles. (See Table 3.)

  Table 3. Average Weekly Wage

  USA and Three Largest Counties       

         3rd quarter 2011                  

United States                  $916

New York, N.Y.                1,647

Cook, Ill.                    1,047

Los Angeles, Calif.           1,026

If one multiplies the total jobs in Table 1 by the average weekly wage in Table 3, it generates a good first approximation of the relative Gross County Product, i.e., the economic product of people working in each county. This number was the foundation for the NYC Comptroller's Office estimates of New York City's Gross City Product in the 1990s. New York City was the first city to develop Gross City Product estimates, at a time when Gross State Products were not available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, as they are now.
Finally, we look at how the third-quarter 2011 average wage compares with the same quarter in 2010. This shows wages increasing faster in the rest of the United States. The average wage increase between the third quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2011 was 5.3 percent - from a much lower base than in the three largest counties. The Los Angeles County increase was only slightly below the national average, whereas New York County and Cook County wages rose 0.7 and 1.3 percentage points more slowly than the nation. (See Table 4.)  

Table 4. Increase in Average Weekly Wage

   USA and Three Largest Counties     

 3rd quarter 2011 (% change from 2010)

United States                 5.3%

Los Angeles, Calif.           5.2%           

New York, N.Y.                4.6%

Cook, Ill.                    4.0%

At low levels of growth, the percentage increase in jobs plus the percentage increase in the average weekly wage approximates the percentage increase in the Gross Product.  So the percentage increase of the national GDP would be approximated at 1.6% + 5.3% = 6.9%. The more accurate formula is multiplicative, which gives slightly larger rates of increase than adding the two percentage increases:

     ΔGross County Product = (E+ΔE) x (W+ΔW),

     where E is Employment and W is Wages.

For the nation, the more accurate figure for the change in the wage component of the Gross Product is 7.0%. (See Table 5.)

Table 5. Increase in Wage Component of Gross Product

         USA and Three Largest Counties     

       3rd quarter 2011 (% change from 2010)

                    A=(E+ΔE) B=(W+ΔW)C=AxB   ΔGCP

United States       101.6%   105.3%  107.0%  7.0%

New York, N.Y.      102.6%   104.6%  107.3%  7.3%
Cook, Ill.          102.0%   104.0%  106.1%  6.1%

Los Angeles, Calif. 100.8%   105.2%  106.0%  6.0%

From the last column in Table 5 we can now answer the question – how have the wage sectors of the three largest counties been performing based on the latest county employment and wage data?
The wage component of the nation’s economy grew 7 percent. The nation was led by New York County, which grew 7.3 percent. The other two counties’ wage economies lagged behind. Wages grew at a faster rate in Los Angeles County than in New York County, but from a very much lower base (as shown in Table 3).
We get a general picture of the relative performance of the county wage economies from the QCEW data. We can then drill down into the industry components to understand which parts of each wage economy are contributing the most. This will be the subject of another post.