Our new report, “The state of Black residents: The relevance of place to racial equity and outcomes,” explores how equity varies across American communities. As part of that research, we studied county-by-county outcomes for the more than three million Black residents of the greater New York metropolitan area.
We found that they lag their white neighbors in meeting eight goals we all share: a basic standard of living, financial stability, good job opportunities, long and healthy lives, educational opportunities, stable housing, virtual and physical connectivity, and stable communities.
Across these goals, the New York region has the lowest overall Black outcomes, on average, of the nation’s 12 largest metropolitan areas. And while many counties in the region have reduced racial disparities for Black residents, progress has been slow. Based on the pace of change over the last decade, reaching parity with white residents could take an average of 250 years across counties in our region.
We can do better, and we must. Narrowing racial gaps will do more than help right historic wrongs: it will also tap huge wellsprings of energy and talent to the benefit of everyone in the region and across the country.
Outcomes and parity vary widely by county. Like members of other racial groups, Black residents experience starkly different outcomes depending on where they live. The median incomes of Black households in the area range from a low of about $46,000 in the Bronx, for example, to a high of $130,000 in Hunterdon County in New Jersey. Only about 16 percent of Black residents of North Jersey’s Passaic County have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 48 percent in Putnam County in New York.
The picture looks especially stark in Manhattan and Newark, which have some of the largest disparities of any large city in the nation, with overall Black outcomes less than 45 percent of white outcomes. Consider life expectancy: in Newark and Manhattan, white residents live four-and-a-half to six years longer than Black residents, on average.
While disparities are smaller in some other places, in no county in the New York area do Black outcomes exceed 80 percent of white outcomes across economic, physical, and social well-being.
Closing the gaps
The New York area has the resources to provide opportunities for everyone: it produced goods and services worth more than $2 trillion in 2022, while Los Angeles, the nation’s second-most productive metro area, produced less than$1.25 trillion. The region is even farther ahead in productivity per capita.
The gaps between Black and White well-being in the area reflect generations of discrimination in housing, lending, education, hiring, medical care, criminal justice, and other realms. These disparities will not disappear overnight, but we can and should take more steps now.
The public and private sectors can support initiatives such as place-based investment in Black communities that have been underserved. They can also invest in solutions that would help low-income households of all races while accelerating progress toward parity.
For example, Black families in every New York area county are less likely than white families to own their homes, more likely to have high rent burdens, and spend a larger share of their incomes on childcare. Expanding access to affordable housing, quality childcare and preschool could meaningfully improve Black families’ well-being while helping low- and middle-income families of all races
Stable housing, particularly in mixed-income neighborhoods, improves outcomes in children. Cognitive development, education, and future college attendance and earnings, families’ food security, and proximity to jobs. High-quality early childhood development programs can counteract the effects of child poverty, increase parents’ and especially mothers’ ability to work, and benefit all students who attend preschool in diverse classrooms.
These and other investments could help unlock vast untapped strengths in Black communities, and communities of all races, across the region and the country.
Linda Liu is a Partner in McKinsey’s New York office where Dominic Williams is an Associate Partner. Dominic served as Chief Policy Advisor to New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Chief of Staff to the First Deputy Mayor of New York City.
Dominic Williams, Linda Liu , 2024-03-29 17:03:03
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