Catherwood LibraryILR School

Chicago was one of only four U.S. cities cited in Pricewater Cooperhouse’s 2016 edition of “Cities of Opportunity”, its periodic analysis rating cities on “economic innovation and common wellbeing”. The city had earned the distinction based on a low employment rate and the fact that almost one-fourth of Chicago households in 2016 earned more than $100,000 a year; in addition, since 1970, the number of wealthy census tracts had increased four-fold. A common belief today is that rural areas in America are suffering from lack of economic opportunity, with resources and talent being driven towards large urban areas that are reaping the benefits of globalization and technological advancement. Those same two forces are applying great pressure on prosperous large cities such as Chicago, however – resulting in an equally large if not larger divide between the wealthy and the poor. In theory, each new job for an educated worker in a city should result in five jobs for less educated people, but it hasn’t happened in Chicago, where large sections of the population have been unable to get ahead, due to the compounded effects of two forces – the legacy of segregation and the decline of industrial jobs in factories and steel plants. Middle class African Americans have been leaving the city in droves between 2000 and 2010, and those left behind in segregated, decimated ghettos are unable to find nearby educational or job opportunities to help them leave; they often lack the necessary transportation to find jobs in the suburbs. While low-income whites in economically depressed rural areas are told to move to big cities, or areas that are booming such as Texas, the reality is that global cities like Chicago have their own poverty issues, with 34 percent of African Americans living in relative poverty and with worse economic outcomes than African Americans living in less prosperous cities.