| Number 229 | November 7, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, A heartfelt THANK YOU to all who sent in their pledges of financial support for the Notes during the just-completed pledge drive. You are a part of the movement to build and sustain an alternative information network in the United States. In the age of Time-Warner, Disney, and Clear Channel Communications, I hope you can see that your contributions to projects like Nygaard Notes are among the best evidence we have that there is hope for a different future. Does it seem to you that all I’ve done for the past few weeks is slog through statistical tables and charts and graphs and rankings and percentages and...? Well, it seems that way to me, and I’m actually starting to develop a tic in my eyelid from too much staring at tiny numbers. SO... That must mean that next week’s Notes is going to be something entirely different. What will it be? I’ll be hornswoggled if I know. But it will not involve statistics! (at least, not too many...) I briefly comment in this week’s Notes that the racial terms “white”
and “black” are not to be used like the Census Bureau uses
them, but I don’t explain why. I believe that the idea of “race”
is a socially-constructed device that should continually be questioned.
While the effects of racism are real enough, the basis for the whole
system – i.e. “race” – is a fiction. The designation
“white” is particularly suspect, about which I’ll say
more as time goes on. For now, I just wanted to remove any mystery surrounding
my use of racial terms. If you want to read a little bit about this
idea, check out this website: Hey, that’s a long editor’s note, for me. Basta ya! On with the show! Nygaard |
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Two “quotes” this week. They’re both from the same article, but they are each so tremendously revealing, in different ways, that I have to offer both of them. They’re from the same Advertising column in the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of September 20th, headlined “Highlights From an Advertising Conference.” It seems that the 2003 annual conference of the Association of National Advertisers has just concluded and, as usual, when these sorts of people get together they say and do all sorts of amazing things. The first amazing thing is the outline that was presented of the initial activities of a fledgling organization called, for now, the Task Force to Mobilize American Business for Public Diplomacy. (“Public Diplomacy” is the polite word for what we used to call “propaganda.”) Here are the words the Times published:
For those who aren’t accustomed to thinking in this bizarre fashion, the “brand” to which he refers is the United States of America. Bonus “Quote” of the Week, from the same article:
Did you notice the definition assumed here? “America” = “Chief Executives of Leading American Corporations.” |
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The Index of Social Health combines 16 social indicators to come up with its overall ranking. Last week I reported that between 1970 and 2000 the social health of America declined by 29 percent. I gave some details on the six indicators that have shown overall improvement over the past 30 years. Over that same period, ten of the social indicators have declined. They are: Child Abuse, Child Poverty, Teen Suicide, Teen Drug Abuse, Wages, Economic Inequality, Food Stamp Coverage, Access to Affordable Housing, Health Care Costs for the Elderly, and the Number of People of All Ages Without Health Insurance. Here are some of the details: Child Abuse: The level of child abuse in the U.S. is more than four times what it was in the 1970s—the worst performance of any of the 16 indicators in the ISH. In 2000 there were approximately 3 million referrals affecting approximately 5 millions children. Child Poverty: In 1970 14.9 percent of kids under 18 lived in poverty. In 2000 the number was 15.6 percent. The Report points out that “Despite recent improvements, the U.S. ranks near or at the bottom of the industrial world in the performance of this indicator.” Teen Suicide: The rate of teen suicide is one-third higher now than it was in 1970 (7.9 per 100,000, up from 5.9 per 100,000). That’s better than the late-80s and early 90s, when the rate hovered between 10.0 and 11.0. Still, why is it worse than it was 30 years ago? Teen Drug Abuse: This indicator should be viewed with a large grain of salt, since it uses the word “abuse” even though the statistics it cites are only for “use” of illicit drugs. As a former chemical dependency counselor, I know that “use” and “abuse” are not the same, especially for teenagers (with whom I used to work.) But, for the record, the rate of USE of illegal drugs was the highest in 1979, when 54.2 percent of 12th-graders used some, and was lowest in 1992, when only 27.1 percent did. It’s gone up since then, and was at 40.9 percent in 2000. Wages: No grain of salt needed here. This is bad news, and there’s nothing ambiguous about it. The average weekly wage in the U.S. in 1972 was $315.44. In 2000 it was $272.16. That’s a drop of 13.7 percent. Economic Inequality: This is the gap between the rich and the poor, and is another social indicator that is clear and unambiguous. Besides the basic injustice of inequality, the Report points out that “recent studies show that high levels of inequality are closely correlated with poor health outcomes and other adverse social conditions.” I reported the raw numbers on this a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t give the percentage increase in inequality: The gap between the poorest fifth of the population and the richest increased by 21 percent between 1970 and 2000. Food Stamp Coverage: This is the Fordham people’s way of arriving at a rough estimate of hunger in the U.S. There are other ways, but we’ll go with this one for now. “Just in the seven years between 1993 and 2000, the percent of poor households who received the food stamps to which they were entitled fell from 51.9 percent to 33.8 percent.” This deterioration, says the Report, “is generally thought to be related to changes in the welfare system, which has made it more difficult for poor families to receive food stamps.” Access to Affordable Housing: Housing prices were 12 percent less affordable in 2000 than they were in 1970, according to industry figures. Health Care Costs for the Elderly: This indicator only includes “out-of-pocket” costs, which are the things that are not covered by Medicare or other insurance. In 1970, seniors were spending 7.9 percent of their income on health costs. In 2000, that had gone up to 12.9 percent. Last week I reported the good news that the senior poverty rate is down, but this week we see that more of the average senior’s income has to go for needed health care. The right hand giveth, and the left hand taketh away. Number of People of All Ages Without Health Insurance: As the Report points out, “In nearly all industrial nations, and in many developing countries, health insurance coverage in available to all citizens. This is not true in the United States...” The report continues, “People with no coverage or insufficient coverage are known to suffer more and longer from physical ailments.” This is one of our most widely-acknowledged national outrages, and it has gotten worse over the past 30 years. In 1970, 10.9 percent of United Statesians had no insurance. By 2000, it was 14.0 percent. The latest (2003) reports put the number at 15.2 percent. As with unemployment figures, these statistics understate the extent of the problem. (For example, if you factor in people who were uninsured for “part of” the year, rather than for the entire year, the number of “uninsured” goes up by 80 or 90 percent. |
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Last week I said that we can’t understand income and wealth without breaking it down by race. Also last week, I criticized the Index of Social Health for not “emphasizing” how their various indicators differ by race and sex. However, the Social Report does include some data in its appendix, and I’d like to emphasize that data here, as it is so important. I’ll just look at a few indicators, focusing on white/black racial disparities. (I’ll use the Census bureau terminology of “white” and “black” without the quotation marks, but please remember that these terms are arbitrary and highly suspect.) What follows has a lot of numbers in it. If all these numbers are too much, you can just read the last sentence in each paragraph. They all start: “The latest bottom line.” OK, here we go. Overall, INFANT MORTALITY has improved from 20 out of every 1,000 kids in 1970 to 6.9 per 1,000 in 2000. For white people the rates went from 17.8 to 5.7; for blacks the comparable numbers were 32.6 and 14.0. In relative terms, the disparity went from 83 percent higher for blacks in 1970 to 245 percent higher in 2000. The latest bottom line: Blacks are two-and-one-half times worse off than whites. The overall rate of HOMICIDES went from 7.9 per 100,000 in 1970 to 5.5 in 2000. In 1976 the rate per 100,000 white people was 5.1; for blacks it was 37.1, more than 7 times as bad. By 2000, the white/black homicide numbers were 3.3/20.5. The latest bottom line: Blacks are more than 6 times worse off than whites. In 1970, 17.3 percent of all 18-24-year-olds in the U.S. had not COMPLETED HIGH SCHOOL, and that was only 12.4 percent in 2000. For black people the rate went from 33.3 to 15.3. The latest bottom line: That’s a significant narrowing of the gap, but blacks are still almost 25 percent worse off than whites. In 1970 we had 24.6 percent of U.S. SENIORS LIVING IN POVERTY, and that was 10.2 percent in 2000. For whites the numbers were 22.6 and 8.9. The black rate of senior poverty went from 48.0 percent, or 212 percent worse, to 22.4 percent, or 252 percent worse. The latest bottom line: Blacks are more than two-and-one-half times worse off than whites. The 1970 overall UNEMPLOYMENT rate was 4.9 percent, and the 2000 rate was 4.0. White rates were 5.1 percent (1972) and 3.5 percent, black rates were 10.4 (1972) and 7.6 percent. The latest bottom line: Blacks have it twice as bad as whites. I’ll take a week off from this subject now, since it’s so many numbers. In a couple of weeks I plan to return briefly to the subject of social health, with a little piece about how one can be deceived by even these sorts of well-intentioned statistics and rankings. I’ll use my own state of Minnesota as an example. “Minnesota Nice?” We’ll see... |