BERKELEY, CA: Hispanic Americans have made significant progress in recent decades in the areas of median home value, wealth accumulation, and employment when compared to their white counterparts, according to new research released Tuesday by Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) at UC Berkeley.
But when it comes to infant mortality, life expectancy, civic engagement and criminal justice, the situation facing Hispanic Americans has gotten worse over the 20-year period measured in the study (2000-2020).
The findings are drawn from the latest update to OBI’s Racial Disparities Dashboard which measures life outcomes across racial groups using a number of indicators. This update uses the same 15 indicators previously used to assess Black-white disparities, enabling comparison between Hispanic and white Americans.
In contrast to Black–white disparities, Hispanic Americans have made measurable progress in several economic domains, including median home value, median family net wealth, and employment—areas where Black Americans continue to face larger gaps relative to white Americans. However, compared with Black–white disparities, Hispanic–white disparities remain more pronounced in civic participation, particularly in voting, indicating significant room for improvement.
Until this latest release, the Dashboard had only measured life outcomes of Black Americans compared to white Americans. Future research will expand to include data on other groups.
The methodology OBI developed in the first release of the Dashboard almost three years ago reflects not just the absolute disparity, but also relative disparity between the racial groups and the progress the minority group has made with respect to the majority group.
This methodology was used for the latest Hispanic-White Dashboard, and was also used to develop small scale dashboards for the residents of San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The Dashboard assigns grades to each indicator of life outcome based on absolute and relative disparity and progress, which shows at a glance whether the disparity has increased, decreased, or remained more or less the same over decades.
It also shows if the overall condition for both groups has improved or gotten worse. The grades are not an evaluation of current performance, but of change over time.
Median home value receives the highest score for Hispanic Americans, earning an A– grade, because the disparity relative to Hispanic homeowners’ median home value has narrowed dramatically—by nearly 90 percent. The relative gap fell from 16.86% in 2000 to just 1.72% in 2020.
The grading system is responsive to the directionality of the four components that constitute the grading: Absolute Disparity, Relative Disparity, Absolute Progress, and Relative Progress. There are indicators where the absolute disparity has worsened but the relative disparity has improved.
Bachelor’s degree exemplifies this situation. While the absolute disparity has increased by 14.67%, relative disparity has fallen by 31.95%. With absolute progress of 68.51% and relative progress of 48.14%, this indicator gets a letter grade C.
Infant mortality rates represent the worst-performing indicator, receiving an F grade, as both absolute and relative disparities worsened over the two decades examined.
The disparity in this area increased from 0.10 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 0.29 in 2020, while the absolute and relative disparities went up by a whopping 190% and 250%, respectively. Compounding this trend, infant mortality rates declined more rapidly among infants of white mothers than among infants of Hispanic mothers—a pattern that is likely to further widen the gap over time. Together, these dynamics make infant mortality rates the most concerning and least improved indicator in the study.
The above examples display the possibility of assessing a disparity between two racial groups for any given time period provided consistent and accurate data is available for such an analysis. The Dashboard can highlight the progress the United States, or municipalities, have made over a time period towards reducing or worsening a disparity.
This tool could help researchers, policymakers, racial justice advocates, and the public understand the dynamics of disparities and allow them to explore potential solutions to reducing them. In particular, the report cards can help policymakers identify priority areas for policy intervention. Additionally, these report cards could be used to measure access to opportunity for different racial groups, and help establish a baseline towards Targeted Universalism.
Users can watch this short how-to video that provides a general overview of the project and showcases its different interactive functions.
We solicit feedback and suggestions on expanding this methodology to other geographies and time periods. We also encourage partnerships with community foundations to develop these dashboards for their respective regions and indicators of interest. You can reach out to us at equity_metrics_program@berkeley.edu.
Media Contact
Marc Abizeid
marcabizeid@berkeley.edu
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