Professor Prabal De, CCNY 2014
Census Data
The “New” New York Reevaluation
010 years
by Alexander Chait
in Census Data
There seems to be a large discrepancy between what people can earn in Manhattan versus what type of housing they can afford in Manhattan. According to the Department of Labor, the average minimum wage, as of December 31, 2013, was $8.00. According to the New York Times, as of January 18, 2013, the average Manhattan apartment costs $3,973 A MONTH. The disparity of wages to housing expenses is exorbitant. It is not seemingly possible for a person working an average amount of hours per year, which is 2,088 hours to afford to live close to where they work in New York City. Based upon the national average, a New Yorker earning the minimum wage will only earn $16,704, BEFORE TAXES. This does not even take into account other cost of other living expenses, such as food, health care, transportation, clothing, or other miscellaneous expenses. Although New York has traditionally opened its doors to “…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, it will not be able to provide you with affordable housing or lifestyle
Instead of New York City being the gleaming city, that was once a symbol of freedom, opportunity and the American Dream—it has slowly been evolving into a more materialistic beast—one that does not make any provisions for those beloved low wage earners who keep the city productive and growing. The average apartment in the Bronx Costs $2258, in Queens it is $3449, in Brooklyn it is $3758, and lastly, in Staten Island it is $1888 a month. The exponentially increasing cost of living outpaces any minimum wage increase. As a result, the disparity between the rich and the poor in the city continues to expand, and the working poor cannot live a decent, simple existence within the five boroughs. New York City is certainly representative of a melting pot of religion, culture and ethnicity, but there is not the same representation in financial capability. It seems to have become a city of haves and have-nots, even if the have-nots consist of hard working families trying to achieve a better life. Have we outgrown our capacity to provide a decent standard of living for our own residents? And if so, shouldn’t we be thinking of how we can ensure that each person who contributes to our city can be able to live well enough to enjoy all that it has to offer? Maybe “breathing free” has become the only thing that most people can afford in NYC.
The Links to the articles can be found here:
The Concept Deep in the Melting Pot
010 years
by Abhishek Samdaria
in Census Data
Having lived in numerous places around the world, I really appreciate Mr. Salvo’s talk about the immigration population of New York City. Everyone knows the phrase that New York City is a big melting pot, but that’s only a phrase. During Mr. Salvo’s talk I finally began to realize how vast the melting pot really was and that really lets me admire and appreciate the opportunity I have to be living in New York because I come in contact with so many different types of people from all over the world and get to experience so many new things.
One interesting point that Mr. Salvo talks about is that people come here because this is the land of opportunity. And living in a diverse place such as New York calls for different type of people to be living next to each other. Mr. Salvo talks about you can have two ethnic communities who might dislike each other due to world conflicts but live next to each other for the sake of their children and their education. This just shows how much larger New York City is than just a simple melting pot.
“The death of one person is tragedy, the death of millions is statistics” Erich Maria Remarque
110 years
All those charts, graphs and demographics that we saw is a good thing that can help to understand different neighborhoods of the New York City. Presentation looked nice and colorful. However, because of all those numbers I had a nasty feeling that humanity is not important. As Remarque wrote in “The Black Obelisk,” “the death of one person is tragedy, the death of millions is statistics.” That is exactly what those charts with numbers represent. They represent each person just as a number. Than means that each of us just as number and if we will die, will get education or will drop out of a college it will not have any effect on the charts because we can always be replaced by another number.
From one point of view demographics helps to understand the population that lives in different neighborhoods, their needs, their values, helps to shape policy for each place. From another point of view charts with numbers dehumanize people by making them just a number instead of separate human being. Also big companies, politicians use demographics to manipulate people by adjusting their behavior and their goods to different communities.
So we do need to use demography but we cannot forget that those numbers are people not just numbers.
Census Data
110 years
by Alanna Leung
in Census Data
I apologize for the lateness of this post. For some reason, I thought this was due by next Friday, Feb 14.
It seems that the majority of the audience was surprised by the relative decreases and increases of foreign and local immigrants respectively. Residents of the United States seem to have a preconception that New York City’s desirability will unerringly remain in the top tier of places to live. While New York City is still one of the main entry points to a country whose currency value is higher than most, unemployment is notoriously high due to both a bad economy and increased outsourcing. Jobs (and steady income) are becoming more accessible in other places.
On the other hand, people already in the US would continue to flock to NYC as large metropolises are a beacon for those in smaller cities. I spoke to someone who attends City College after growing up in Michigan. While there are plenty of excellent schools there, she chose to attend CCNY for the opportunities the city provides in the field of advertisement and business. No matter what, large cities such as New York will always have appeal.
Understanding New York
010 years
by Lisa Wong
in Census Data
Most striking about Mr. Salvo’s presentation was the population that not just New York City makes up, but each of its boroughs make up in comparison to the rest of the country. All the attention that both New Yorkers and the rest of the world places on this city now seems more reasonable.
Another interesting concept that Mr. Salvo spoke of was this constant process of immigrants leaving New York City as more come into it. This gap between proficient and non-proficient English speakers can now be understood as a result of constant shifts in New York City’s immigrants and not because of a lack of effort.
On a more inquisitive note, I can’t help but wonder if the ‘energy’ that Mr. Salvo sees in the city will continue to grow. As more people from within the country are moving to New York City, instead of immigrants, I see less diversity. I see less drive in the work force and less change because of the resulting lack of (new) interactions.
Foreigners in NYC
110 years
It was interesting to see just how much of New York City’s population is made up of foreign-born immigrants. As a person who didn’t live in NYC, although there was decent diversity in my high school, it was nothing compared to what I see now in City College. Even in my suite in the Towers, each of the three of us are different ethnicities.
One of the slides also noted that people traveling to NYC from inside and outside the United States are arriving better educated and able to make more money. I find it interesting how, despite being one of the biggest commercial cities of the United States, the education in NYC isn’t as good as even other places in the US.
Lastly, something else I would like to see is data on the types of people moving to NYC from other places in the United States. Are they “native” Americans, or possibly immigrants moving to NYC from another city?
The Consequences of Inaccurate Census Data
110 years
by Jakob Rehmann
in Census Data
Mr. Salvo spoke about a public report called “The Newest New Yorkers: Characteristics of the City’s Foreign-born Population” produced by the NYC Department of City Planning (and actually co-written by Mr. Salvo himself). Mr. Salvo explained that the purpose of the report is to provide information about immigration patterns to non-profit organizations to optimize their efforts. Before the talk I didn’t realize that census data was more than just counting the population to determine the amount of representatives for each state. According to Freakonomics, economists, sociologists, political scientists use census data for diverse purposes. These researchers are granted access to a much more detailed sample of the census data. However, the Census Bureau slightly distorts data entries so that no individual can be identified but that demographical generalizations can still be made. However, due to programming errors, this effort rendered erroneous information concerning certain demographic groups (especially people over the age of 65). These inconsistencies are very concerning when considering that census data is not only vital to the structure of our constitutional republic, but also to policy makers, researchers, and non-profit strategists.
Read more at http://freakonomics.com/2010/02/02/can-you-trust-census-data/
A Surprisingly Large Gateway
010 years
by Maxwell Berkow
in Census Data
I was not able to attend John Salvo’s presentation, but from a quick look at his slides I can tell that immigration, specifically the constantly changing population of New York City, is an extremely complicated subject. After analyzing the information provided, many interesting realizations can be uncovered. For me, the most interesting discovery involved immigration from the Dominican Republic to New York. Growing up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, my early education was at schools with large Dominican populations. Despite this heavy influence in my neighborhood, I had no idea that this path of immigration accounted for 13.0% of the city’s immigrants in 2012. Even more incredible was that this accounted for almost half of total Dominican immigrants to the United States in that year. In 2012, just under ten million Dominicans immigrated to the United States, over 10% of the entire population of the Dominican Republic.
The “New” New York
110 years
by Alexander Chait
in Census Data
The United States of America has long appealed to the plight of the immigrant—one that is so embedded in our culture that we even etched the sonnet, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus into the Statue of Liberty. However, the ever-dynamic New York is not the same place that immigrants flocked to in hopes of a better life. Instead, a “new” New York has emerged; one that only appeals to the extraordinarily wealthy, capable of sustaining an extravagant, grandiose lifestyle. This is a new concept that has been engrained into my consciousness and what I found particularly interesting about Joe Salvo’s talk—the fact that he quotes statistics conflicting with this concept. He stated that the percent of foreign-born people of New York City is 37.6% of the total population—a figure that has increased substantially over the recent years. However, I thought that the percent of foreign-born people living in New York City would decrease due to the exponentially increasing cost of living in New York City. Usually, immigration is synonymous with poverty, and I always imagined it to be very difficult to immigrate to New York City. This has made me question the types of immigrants who are entering New York City, as well as consider whether they are not as impoverished as in previous generations. I would personally be interested in perhaps seeing what types of professions the immigrants to New York City have, what they earned before and after they immigrated, and in addition what is the cost of living both the country they came from and in the U.S.
The City That Never Sleeps
010 years
by Oneeka Khan
in Census Data
Even though I’ve lived in New York City all my life, I can’t get over feeling that I’m still a tourist in Manhattan. Every time I go to Times Square, there’s always something new to see and it never gets old. NYC is the epitome of opportunities and is one of the most targeted tourist attractions. For this reason, it is obvious that people from all corners of the globe would flock to the great city as soon as they got the opportunity. However, the demographical information that Joe Salvo presented to us was something I took for granted before. It was refreshing to learn the exact population number in the city and the five boroughs as well as how many people immigrate. It was actually surprising to learn that more people move to NYC from within the country than from other countries. I also didn’t expect a majority of immigrants to be educated with degrees and end up more successful than natives. These demographics made me realize how different NY really is from other states in the U.S. We call ourselves Americans but our state is so diverse and culturally different from other states that I don’t know if we really are true Americans. Nevertheless, I am proud to be a New Yorker and wouldn’t have it any other way.
