Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Good fortune, dire poverty, and inequality in Baltimore: An American story

The unrest in Baltimore has fostered nationwide discussion about the root causes of the tensions in the city’s poor neighborhoods that led to an outbreak of riots and mass protests. While criminal justice policy and police-community relationships are arguably at the core of the present debate, the economic and social context in which those actions took shape matters greatly too. Yet media coverage has obscured a few key facts about economic and social conditions in Baltimore and other major American cities. The charts below situate the distress affecting neighborhoods like Freddie Gray’s Sandtown-Winchester against the backdrop of wider dynamics in Baltimore City and its metropolitan area, and in comparison to other cities and regions around the country.
Source: Brookings Institution

Read online report

No comments: