How do racial geographic patterns influence trust and ownership?
Considerations of race further come into play, when we examine how hardship is distributed across the city. This can be visualized through the Hardship Index from data in the Chicago Health Atlas. On their website, The Hardship Index is described as “a composite score reflecting hardship in the community (higher values indicate greater hardship)” originally created by the Brookings Institute in 1906 (Chicago Health Atlas). This measure considers the following factors: “unemployment, age dependency, education, per capita income, crowded housing, and poverty” (ibid). By standardizing all of these factors into a single score ranging from 0-100, comparison between geographies is possible.
Figure 3 demonstrates how the Hardship Index manifests itself across the city of Chicago, with the worst scores concentrated on the South and West sides in red while the best scores are concentrated on the North side in green. Figures 2.1-2.4indicate the people who are concentrated in these areas, but to make the correlation clearer, it can be demonstrated graphically—particularly the correlation between the concentration of Black people in a neighborhood and Hardship versus the concentration of Hispanic people in a neighborhood and Hardship.
One of the primary things to note about Chicago’s landscape is the persistently high level of racial segregation present in the city. Using the “Community Data Snapshots 2023” data collected and hosted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and most recently updated July 11th, 2023, it’s possible to visualize this segregation across the city. In Figures 2.1-2.4, I have mapped out the percentage of each race within the various community areas. In Figure 2.1, the Black population is concentrated in the South and West of the city, while Figure 2.3 shows a heavy Hispanic population between these heavily Black areas. On the North side, however, there is a large White population as shown in Figure 2.2. The Asian population is more lightly distributed throughout the North side of the city, with the heaviest concentration in Armour Square, in the Near South Side (Figure 2.4).
Both Figures 4 and 5 display a positive correlation between the concentration of Black/Hispanic people in a neighborhood and the levels of hardship that it experiences, with there being slightly more compelling case for the correlation between Black concentration and Hardship (R = 0.54, p < 0.001) versus Hispanic concentration and Hardship (R = 0.217, p = 0.061). The correlation between Black concentration and Hardship is statistically significant, while the correlation between Hispanic concentration and Hardship falls below the threshold for significance.
What is even more shocking is the extremely high negative correlation between White concentration and Hardship (Figure 6). Beyond mere statistical significance, there is almost a direct negative correlation between White concentration and Hardship (R = -0.925, p < 0.001) While the degree to which Hardship exists primarily within Black and Hispanic communities of Chicago may be understood, one thing is clear: Hardship is certainly not present where large concentrations of White people are. This analysis reveals that race is an important indicator as it relates to the levels of hardship one might experience within their Chicago community, particularly for those that live in community areas that maintain a racial majority.
