According to a recent article in the Atlantic, childhood poverty in the United States is at a record low, down to 15.7% as of 2016. This is well below the post-recession high of 18.1% in 2012 as well as the overall measured high of 28.4% in 1967. The 15.7% of children in poverty is, [...]
Classifying age groups into "generations" is by no means a perfect science. Nonetheless, it's almost always helpful when assessing economic, political, and cultural trends to group people based on the year they were born. The "Baby Boomer" generation is, of course, defined as those being born following WWII-- as GIs returned home to the [...]
This week's Friday Factday highlights data from the Q3 2017 update to The Quarter, The Atlanta Regional Commission's quarterly publication exploring leading indicators of overall economic health from a non-economist's view. This week, we dig into the most recent S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index numbers. The Case-Shiller index is the leading indicator measuring the [...]
This month's Regional Snapshot picks up where the July Regional Snapshot on Affordable Housing left off. In the October Regional Snapshot we take a deeper dive into affordable housing data, mapping it onto our region's employment centers in an effort to visualize the relationship between housing affordability and concentrations of regional employment. ARC's Employment [...]
We spend a lot of time analyzing data about the region’s housing market. We have examined how home prices have recovered since the Great Recession (here) and we recently looked at the growing affordability crisis in metro Atlanta (here). But with the recent release of the latest Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data for [...]
Our most recent update of The Quarter analyzes economic data in metro Atlanta for Q3 2017. The Quarter includes data on employment, home price indices, building permits, retail and office space, and more, with the goal of identifying what areas of our economy are striving and what areas are slower to recover. Visit The [...]
If you live in a household in the Atlanta Metro region which makes less than $50k a year, chances are that 30% or more of your household income is going to pay either your rent or your mortgage. The map below, by census tract, shows those areas with the greatest affordability challenges in dark [...]
This week the AJC released an article exploring the "digital divide" in metro Atlanta. This division - among those with access to the internet and other digital technologies and those with limited or no access - is potentially stifling the economic prosperity of those residents who lack access by leaving them at a disadvantage [...]
The GINI Index is a calculated value between 0 and 1 that is intended to represent the degree of inequality within a given area. The index can be calculated for an array of indicators but is most commonly used to measure income inequality. On the chart above the GINI Index is representing the inequality [...]
