Could you live on $30 per day? Could you take care of your family?
For too long, black men of prime working ages have remained the St. Louisans least likely to benefit from the upward economic mobility that defines the American dream. As the St. Louis region considers the proposed Better Together merger of city and county, it is critical that we consider just how a new “metro city” or other regional developments might impact the lives of young black men.
Surveying almost 40 years of data reveals a significant downward economic pattern. The American ideal that a child should have better opportunity and be better off economically than their parents remains a dream deferred for the more than 30,000 black men ages 18-29 in our region. For that group, recent decades have been marked by steep declines in the personal income, which have fallen from a median of $29,000 in 1980 to $11,000 in 2016 (adjusted for inflation). Read more here.