Interesting..... Poverty in Our Cities.U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007
What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate all have in common?
Detroit, MI (1st on the poverty rate list) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961;
Buffalo, NY (2nd) hasn't elected one since 1954;
Cincinnati , OH (3rd)...since 1984;
Cleveland , OH (4th)...since 1989;
Miami , FL (5th) has never had a Republican mayor;
St. Louis , MO (6th)....since 1949;
El Paso , TX (7th) has never had a Republican mayor;
Milwaukee , WI (8th)...since 1908;
Philadelphia , PA (9th)...since 1952;
Newark , NJ (10th)...since 1907.
Einstein once said, 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'
It is the poor who habitually elect Democrats---yet they are still ...................
POOR
The first thing I muttered was "correlation does not equal causation!" (Yes, I mutter with exclamation points.)
Then I got curious and ran some numbers myself. Looked at state poverty rates to remove the urban/rural political effect (news flash: cities tend to vote Democratic!), and then sorted those by political party of the current governor:
That doesn't tell you much -- we're averaging averages, which is never really a good idea statistically. So if you take the state-wide populations, and the state-wide poor populations, and aggregate them, it looks like this:
Statistically it's pretty crude, but at least it's not cherry-picking data. I wouldn't draw much of a conclusion from this, other than to mutter that "correlation does not equal causation" to myself. Again. With an exclamation point in there somewhere.
M E-L posted this on February 23, 2009 10:35 PM
This post is filed under: Business & Economy, National News
It is also indexed under:
Democrats
Economy
GOP
Poverty
Statistics
There are many good studies showing that inquality rates fall under Democratic presidential administrations and rise under Republicans. The numbers work even if you give the previous administration credit for a "lag" which influences the next president's economic situation. A few links here:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/3/21/223816/542
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/12/republicans_democrats_and_ineq/
Comment #1 :: link :: February 24, 2009 2:04 AM :: homepageBecause policy is driven by political preference, this actually might be a case where correlation might, in fact, be causation. But I doubt it, because there's a lot going on.
It occurs to me that urban centers have high poverty rates because of decades affluent flight out of cities, whereas in smaller cities the valuable property is in town and the poor are pushed to the rural outskirts.
Also, once you go back beyond the Dixiecrat era (1908? 1907?) party affiliation is pretty much meaningless. Chances are in TR's time I'd have been a Republican.
Comment #2 :: link :: February 24, 2009 9:41 AM :: homepage
The state level may be the same, but AREAS tell us that poverty is higher in Democrat locations.
As for inequality, that just means that poverty is a matter of lower PRODUCTION.
Comment #3 :: link :: September 13, 2009 4:55 PM
