By Kiljoong Kim

Despite decades of effort – including declaring a war – to alleviate poverty, the struggle to survive day-to-day with low wages and unemployment persists for millions of people.
And though medical advances and the wider availability and lower cost of food have extended the lifespan of even those who struggle financially, this means that many individuals simply live poorly longer, given the lack of economic mobility in our society.
The result is an intersection of poverty with age that shows us not all poor neighborhoods are created equal and, perhaps more importantly, should force us to rethink how we deal with poverty.

Read More

Posted on October 2, 2014

By Kiljoong Kim

Ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its study on fertility in September, there has been much discussion about American birth rates by the mainstream (and not so mainstream) media.
Depending on one’s political views and preferred media outlets, the interpretation of the results and corresponding opinions vary: While CNN reported that the rate is a record low, the Huffington Post and the New York Times stressed that the rate is stabilizing.
USA Today took the news with characterisic optimism; the Washington Times and WND (formerly World Net Daily) expressed concern about a future of fewer American babies leading to fewer American workers.

Read More

Posted on November 25, 2013

By Kiljoong Kim

It’s no secret that Chicago has a history of segregation. The issue has been debated and researched for decades and has resulted in significant books including Black Metropolis, American Apartheid, There Are No Children Here and American Project, to name a few. While there are ever so slight signs of progress, there is a residential pattern seldom discussed but so persistent that it is a reminder that we are still very much divided as ever.
Many recent issues around the city can be traced to the uneven distribution of residents across the city: The ignorant parents who are too afraid to send their children to other neighborhoods for a baseball game; massive closure of schools under the label of under-enrollment in some parts of the city while many schools in other neighborhoods are bursting at their seams; and numerous shootings that are ignored by the media and remain uninvestigated by the police. All are about negligence of our environment and failure to think beyond few blocks of where we live.
For all intents and purposes, we live in separate cities within miles of each other, begging the question: Why?

Read More

Posted on May 7, 2013

By Kiljoong Kim

Is it the end of American community as we know it?
The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to kill the American Community Survey, an ongoing survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau that collects demographic and economic information from over three million households every year.
The goal of the ACS is to continually provide information about ourselves that has been deemed crucial for policy makers, planners, academics, and businesses. The ACS replaced the long-form of the decennial census that used to collect the same information.

Read More

Posted on May 15, 2012

By Kiljoong Kim

In today’s discussion of increasing economic inequality, the rich are usually represented in the media by celebrities, athletes and entrepreneurs with extraordinary incomes and consumption habits. But scores of the super-rich live amongst us without getting their names in the newspapers or their faces on TV.
Just who are these people? Let’s take a look.

Read More

Posted on July 29, 2011

By Kiljoong Kim

“More than 2 million Chicago-area baby boomers begin turning 65 this year, unleashing a demographic wave that will last nearly two decades and transform nearly every part of the local economy,” Crain’s reported last week in a special report called “The Graying of Chicago.”
“The number of people 65 or older in the Chicago area will soar 65% to 1.7 million by 2030, estimates William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
“That’s less than the 78% increase expected nationally, thanks to immigration in Chicago. Still, about 1 in 6 people in the area will be 65 or older in 2030, compared with 1 in 9 today.”
Our own examination has found that the transition has already begun.

Read More

Posted on February 21, 2011

By Kiljoong Kim

In contemporary American urban life, commuting to work has become one of the most insufferable activities. Considering that the cost of operating a car is well over 50 cents per mile for most cars, for anyone going to work beyond 2.5 miles from their homes, public transit becomes a cheaper option if available. Despite this economic rationale, 80.7% of commuters drive to work (including 0.2% or close to 11,000 who identify taxicab as their primary mode). Many scholars and policy makers attribute this heavy reliance to Americans’ obsession and fascination with cars, sense of independence, and convenience. But what is not often discussed is that it is also because public transit is built for those who might need it the least.

Read More

Posted on October 18, 2010

By Kiljoong Kim

A Chicago morning radio show host recently wondered whether seeing billboards in Spanish was good or bad for our society, insinuating that we as Americans should strive to have a common language – English.
Some of his callers said they were appalled by Spanish billboards and could not understand why Spanish-speaking immigrants would not learn English. Others phoned in to say that it is simply freedom of expression and billboards can be displayed in any language. While a great intellectual debate about our society is to be had, the true answer may not be based on what it means to be an American, the First Amendment, or even an official language, but rather, through better understanding of our history.
Similar to the rapid increase in racial and ethnic diversity we have experienced for the past several decades, language has also been exceptionally diverse. Data collected in 2000 and 2008 by the U.S. Census Bureau captured about 95 non-English languages spoken each year in the Chicago metropolitan area. Non-English speakers increased from 24.7% of the total population in 2000 to 27.7% in 2008, with Spanish being the most dominant language (Table 1).

Read More

Posted on May 26, 2010

By Kiljoong Kim

The value of college education has been emphasized in the American educational system for a very long time. School districts around the country treat higher rate college admission as emblematic of their success and universities consider admission of first-generation college students to be their contribution to society’s upward mobility. But is it possible for this valuable measure of human capital to lose its worth? And what does it mean for a city that has portrayed itself as a historically blue-collar and working-class to having increasing numbers of highly educated residents?
Between 1990 to the mid-2000s, Chicago’s adult population over the age of 25 remained steadily around 1.8 million (1.75 million in 1990, 1.82 million in 2000, and 1.77 million in 2006-8 estimate). However, the percentage of that population with college degrees jumped from 19.5 percent in 1990 to 30.2 percent in the mid-2000s. This massive 56 percent increase in less than two decades means that more than 533,000 residents in Chicago have completed at least a four-year college education.
Yet, despite this dramatic shift, Chicago is still behind a number of cities that are composed of more college graduates, including Seattle and San Francisco. (See a really cool chart of this here.) If Chicago’s collective aspiration to be a global city becomes a reality, it is likely to attract and accommodate even more highly educated residents with higher earning power and potential.

Read More

Posted on March 29, 2010

By Kiljoong Kim

A century ago, Daniel Burnham’s plan to develop and redevelop Chicago after the Great Fire, commonly known as the Plan of Chicago of 1909, was launched with many great ambitions. And it’s been celebrated and studied as a classic model for urban design and development ever since. The Plan created a boulevard system, a lakefront largely accessible to the public, and many other amenities that we enjoy today. What is not well-known is that upon implementation, the rising cost of housing displaced many working class residents near downtown. Those residents were largely first-generation Czechs, East European Jews, Italians and Poles, as well as blacks from the South seeking factory jobs in the new industrial age.
Nearly a hundred years later, under the names of urban renewal, revitalization, gentrification, and globalization, the rising cost of housing begins to displace yet another set of working-class immigrants and racial minorities – primarily Mexicans and African Americans – out of several neighborhoods throughout the city. Such displacement is nearly complete in Lincoln Park, Bucktown, Wicker Park and the South Loop, and the progress is ongoing in Rogers Park, Uptown, Albany Park, Pilsen, Bronzeville and Kenwood/Oakland.
This brings up an interesting question of who gets to live in Chicago.

Read More

Posted on September 7, 2009