Urban Cores Now Among the Most Educated Parts of Metropolitan Areas, Says New Cleveland Fed Study
(PRWEB) November 19, 2013 -- Over the last 10 years, areas in or near the central business districts of major metropolitan areas have increasingly become home to individuals with college degrees. Today, educational attainment rates in urban cores are, on average, nearly identical to those in neighborhoods far away from the core according to Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland researcher Kyle Fee.
Fee looked at how college graduates are spatially distributed (often referred to as the BA attainment rate) within the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.
Ranking high in BA attainment rates near their cores are technology-oriented areas like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco and very densely populated areas like Chicago and New York.
Within the Fourth District, Fee notes that Pittsburgh’s BA attainment rate in the urban core was among the top 20 in the nation; Cleveland ranked among the bottom 10.
Read Population Distribution and Educational Attainment within MSAs, 1980‒2010.
Returning citizens face significant employment challenges. Improving their employability could provide a needed boost to the economic conditions in our poorest neighborhoods, where returning citizens are concentrated, say Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland researchers Emre Ergungor and Nelson Oliver.
Returning citizens often lack the skills that are required in the labor market such as education, work experience, and soft skills like reliability and punctuality, say the researchers. Other barriers to employment for returning citizens include substance abuse problems; higher rates of mental and physical illness than the general population; and “collateral sanctions,” i.e., bans on engaging in certain activities, such as obtaining a driver’s license or operating a barber shop.
Studies have shown that training and motivational interventions may improve labor market outcomes for returning citizens, say Ergunor and Oliver, who cite examples of programs at the federal, state, and local levels that are helping to address barriers or are generating employment opportunities for returning citizens.
Read The Employability of Returning Citizens Is Key to Neighborhood Revitalization.
June Gates, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, http://www.clevelandfed.org, +1 (216) 579-2048, [email protected]
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