Abstract
America was on the move. The US Census has calculated the mean center of the US since 1790, and I Fig. 6.1 displays the trajectory of these means from 1790 to 2010. Of course, our main concern in this chapter is the Era 1950 to 1980. Nevertheless, note the movement West and Southwest.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
By spatial mismatch is meant a mismatch between low income household residents and suitable job opportunities.
- 2.
Jargowsky (1997) notes that poverty research of the inner city has focused on individuals rather than on the neighborhoods. The rational was that all residents of poor neighborhoods are not poor (see Duneier 1992 for an examination of stratification in an poor inner city neighborhood). Duneier’s research actually follows a long history of scholars who have pointed out that the inner city is not totally composed of poor residents without jobs. See, for example, Du bois (1899), and Drake and Clayton (1945).
- 3.
Poverty data for 1950 were estimated in two ways, and differences were not significant. I undertook a brief check on the poverty variable because there were 106.5 million observations with no data at the person level. I then estimated the number of people each household represented: NA, Married Couple, Males with no wife, Males with alone, males with a partner, females with no husband, females alone, and females with a partner. I estimated the average family income for those households in poverty, and computed the percentage of households in poverty. I applied this percentage to the number of people each household represented and derived an estimate of the number of people in poverty based on this calculation. I then divided this number by the total population in the US in 1950. My estimate was that there were 36.2% people in poverty in 1950, compared to 37.6% if I used the number of observations with income data. I decided to remain with the larger calculation due to the high rate of poverty in the US at that point in time.
- 4.
Despite the decline in the dropout rate in the South and also in its dropout population, the South had a large dropout population. In fact, the share of national dropout population held by the South for the years 1960, 1970, and 1980 were: 52%, 45%, and 43%, respectively. Again, these percentages reflect the share of all dropouts in the US held by the South.
- 5.
In 1960 data for kindergarten were not available.
- 6.
To see the changes in the shares held by the US born, simply change the signs of changes associated with the foreign born.
- 7.
Data are limited to the years 1960 and 1980 because variables were not available for computing retention status in 1950 and in 1970.
References
Adams, T. K., & Duncan, G. J. (1992). Long-term poverty in rural areas. In C. M. Duncan (Ed.), Rural poverty in America (pp. 63–93). New York: Auburn House.
Bassok, D., & Reardon, S. F. (2013). Academic redshirting in kindergarten: Prevalence, patterns, and implications. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(3), 283–297.
Bogue, D. J., & Seim, E. (1956). Components of population change in suburban and central city populations of standard metropolitan areas, 1940 to 1950. Rural Sociology, 21, 267–275.
Bollens, S. A. (1988). Municipal decline and inequality in American suburban rings, 1960–1980. Regional Studies, 22, 277–285.
Bouston, L. P. (2010). Was postwar suburbanization “white flight?” evidence from the black migration. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(1), 417–443.
Clotfelter, C. T. (2004). After Brown: The rise and retreat of school re-segregation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Committee on National Urban Policy. (1990). Inner-city poverty in the United States. Washington, DC: National Research Council.
Drake, S. C., & Clayton, H. (1945). Black metropolis. New York: Harcourt/Brace Co.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Dudenhefer, P. (1993). Poverty in the rural United States. www.iup.wisc.edu
Duneier, M. (1992). Slim’s table: Race, respectability, and masculinity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fee, K., & Hartley, D. (2011). Urban growth and decline: The role of population density at the city core. Economic Commentary. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Gainsborough, J. F. (2002). Slow growth and urban sprawl: Support for a new regional agenda? Urban Affairs Review, 37(5), 728–744.
Garreau, J. (1991). Edge City: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday.
Gramlich, E., Laren, D., & Sealand, N. (1992). Moving into and out of poor urban areas. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 11(2), 273–287.
Gregory, J. N. (2005). The southern diaspora: How the great migration of black and white southerners transformed America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Hanlon, B. F., & Vicino, T. J. (2005). The fate of inner suburbs: An examination of suburban Baltimore, 1980–2000 (Report #2). Baltimore: Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Harrington, M. (1962). The other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Macmillan Publishers.
Jargowsky, P. A. (1997). Poverty and place: Ghettos, barrios, and the American city. New York: Russell Sage.
Jargowsky, P. A., & Bane, M. J. (1991). Ghetto poverty in the United States. The Urban Underclass, 235, 251–252.
Jargowsky, P. A., & Yang, R. (2005). The underclass revisited: A social problem in decline. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
Kain, J. F. (1968). Housing segregation, negro employment, and metropolitan decentralization. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 82, 175–197.
Kain, J. F. (1992). The spatial mismatch hypothesis: Three decades later. Housing Policy Debate, 3, 371–460.
Lang, R. E. (2003). Edgeless cities: Exploring the elusive metropolis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
Lang, R. E., & Le Furgy, J. (2006). Boomburbs: The rise of Americas accidental cities. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
Lee, S., & Leigh, N. G. (2005). The role of inner-ring suburbs in metropolitan smart growth strategies. Journal of Planning Literature, 19(3), 330–346.
Lewis, R. (1999). Running rings around the city: North American industrial suburbs, 1850 to 1950. In R. Harris & P. L. Luckham (Eds.), Changing suburbs: Foundation, form, and function. London: E and FN Spon.
Listokin, D., & Beaton, W. P. (1983). Revitalizing the older suburbs. News Brunswick: State University New Jersey Press.
Massey, D., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Massey, D. S., & Tannen, J. (2017). Segregation, race and the social worlds of the rich and the poor. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Springer.
Orfield, M. (2002). American metropolis: The new suburban reality. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
Range, B. G., Dongan, K. L., & Pisanowski, J. C. (2011). Rethinking grade retention and academic redshirting: Help school administrators make sense of what works. www.cnx.org
Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty. (1993). Boulder: Westview Press.
Seligman, A. (2005). Block by block: Neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago’s west side. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sutton, D. S. (2008). Urban Revitalization in the United States: Policies and Practices. www.columbia.edu
Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The Inner City, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, W. J. (1997). When work disappears. The world of the urban poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Verdugo, R.R. (2018). Geographic Distributions of the US Population and the School Population During the Post WW2 Era: 1950–1980. In: American Education and the Demography of the US Student Population, 1880 – 2014. Applied Demography Series, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89423-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89423-2_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89422-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89423-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)