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Racial differences (white versus black and Hispanic) dominate whether looking at average or median net worth, and the gap grows as the head of the family ages. Median figures are especially sobering, showing the limited wealth generation of representative black and Hispanic heads of families regardless of age. So, do these advantages and disadvantages transfer to the next generation? Yes, and not just laterally. This second chart looks at the relationship between inheritance and wealth...

Much has been made recently of Detroit’s resurgence and growth. In January, President Obama made a swing through the Motor City, touting “ something special happening in Detroit. ” Yet the comeback has not been evenly felt across the city. The Michigan League for Public Policy’s 2016 Kids Count Data Profile revealed a major fault line earlier this year. From 2006 to 2014, child poverty in Detroit increased by 29 percent, to about 94,000 children or well more than half (57 percent) of the...

Exactly 150 years ago this month, three days of riots in Memphis, Tennessee, left nearly 50 dead, scores more injured, over 90 buildings wrecked, and black residents scattered and terrified. The unrest started with a rumor of black-on-white crime: Black soldiers stationed at Fort Pickering on the city’s south bluffs had allegedly killed white policemen attempting to arrest an African American soldier. Less than a month earlier, the United States Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of...

Khaled Kelkal, a small but solidly built young man with a shock of dense black curls, entered prison at 19, evincing the sort of defiant frivolity that remains the mark of so many young men of his circumstance, the unwanted Arabs of the French banlieues. His robberies, the police chases, had all seemed to him a “game,” he told a sociologist in 1992. His incarceration chastened him. “You know, in prison you can’t help but mull things over. And I really mulled a lot of things over,” he told...

I did it. I finally did it. I went and took a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) class. Why did I do it? (Why does everyone around these parts keep asking me that?!) Well, honestly, I just wanted to be able to critique it better. I mean, I had already conjured it up in my mind to be big, bad and terrible based on what I understood to be its basic premise, the affiliated website, and all I’ve ever heard about it from anyone else. However, the truth is that many of those anyones also hadn’t taken...

At night, many of Los Angeles’s parking lots sit empty, while the estimated 9,500 homeless people who live out of their vehicles rove city streets looking for a place where they can legally park and get some sleep. What they generally find, however, are various restrictions on overnight parking or on oversized vehicles. But relief may finally be coming as the city considers a “safe parking” initiative as part of its $2 billion plan to end homelessness in L.A. The initiative would open up...

Last Friday, after a false start earlier in the week , Arizona restored its State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a jointly funded program that serves the working poor (those who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid). Arizona froze enrollment in the program in 2010, citing recessionary budget concerns. Arizona’s decision is a smart one, both for economic reasons — though SCHIP is state-administered, it receives substantial levels of federal funding — and because the evidence clearly...

The federal government has accused South Dakota of unconstitutionally warehousing the mentally ill and disabled in nursing homes. Meanwhile, at least 16 percent of the nation’s jail and prison inmates are estimated to be mentally ill and about 40 percent of the mentally ill have been incarcerated. Many of the homeless are also mentally ill. Deinstitutionalization, which began decades ago, was supposed to improve treatment, but was not followed by funding for better care. Do we need to return...

A father in county jail is ordered to take a parenting class, but isn’t too enthusiastic about it. As part of the class, he learns about the ACE Study, and does his own ACE score. “Oh my god!” he announces to the class. “I have 7 ACEs.” His mother’s an alcoholic. His dad’s been in and out of jail. He himself started dealing drugs at age 11, and doing drugs at 14. “I’ve got two kids at home experiencing the same things I did,” he says. The light bulb goes on. A few days after a woman who’s...

School suspension rates have risen in recent years. And since the punishment is linked to more severe problems later in life, such as dropping out of school or ending up in prison, researchers at Stanford University have been looking for ways to prevent it. Researchers asked one group of math teachers to complete a 45-minute online activity about how important it is to respect and humanize students. Meanwhile, another group of math teachers read about how to use technology in the classroom.

Twenty years ago this month, Redwood Children’s Services placed its first foster child with a foster family. Camille Schraeder, the executive director and founder of what she expected to be “just a little foster family agency,” had just received her license on April 22, after taking out a line of credit on her new house to lease office equipment. She had just left Trinity School, a facility for troubled youth under the Southern California parent company Guadalupe Homes. Trinity was based on...

A card for Mother’s Day takes time to pick out. For a person who grew up living with domestic violence, it takes even longer. There is so much they want to say, but Hallmark hasn’t quite captured the language. If I were to write one, I would probably start out with, “On this Mother’s Day, I want to tell you something that I never told you. ‘I’m so sorry that you grew up living with domestic violence.’” Because most who do, don’t even know that they experienced Childhood Domestic Violence I...