The Poor Get Poorer

Most economic indicators say that these are good times for Los Angeles, with employment up and unemployment down. But that does not tell the whole story. A research team at UCLA says that an already yawning social gulf between rich and poor is growing and that there is worse to come unless government and business intervene in major ways.

Researchers at the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning say that increasingly segregated neighborhoods, second-rate schooling, workers’ inability to qualify for skilled jobs and depressed pay for unskilled jobs are part of a pattern that holds down the region’s poor.

A contributing factor is that rent takes at least half of the income of 75% of poor families, making amenities or accumulation of money to move up out of the question. Some of it, the researchers say, is a matter of simple wage discrimination. Factors such as age, work experience and education do not fully account for the differences in salaries of qualified white males and that of women and blacks and Latinos.

In a significant finding, the UCLA team also said year-round schools must share the blame for providing many minority and bilingual children with a low-quality education.

The UCLA study offered no remedies, stopping at the point of warning policy-makers of trouble on the horizon. Although the interpretations made by Prof. Paul Ong and his team of graduate students can be challenged, the statistics seem sound. And the team’s conclusion that even “a complete turnaround” in education and other contributing factors probably would not narrow the gap should cause Los Angeles to examine the study with care.

What reports like the UCLA study suggest is that Southern California’s affluent population has a stake in correcting conditions that is almost as high as the stake of the poor in getting better educations, better housing and a fair share of the good jobs. If jobs cannot be filled in the future with well-educated and fulfilled citizens, the jobs will go somewhere else. That is a future in which everyone should be involved in avoiding. Change will require major public investments in nutrition, shelter, health care, education and training. The cost of failing to change will be even higher.