America’s Distinctly Unequal Playing Fields

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


America’s Distinctly Unequal Playing Fields
SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

Teenagers are learning lessons — about inequality — on America’s high school gridirons. When are their elders going to catch on?

By Sam Pizzigati


This weekend, in thousands of communities across the United States, millions of Americans will gather for one of the nation’s most time-honored autumn rituals: the high school football game.

Shoulder pads will thump. Spirals will whistle through the air. Cheerleaders will chant. And economic inequality will be the furthest thing from anybody’s mind.

A mistake. Gridiron savvy won’t determine the outcome of many of the games played this weekend. Inequality will. So suggests some quirky new research from analyst Eric Segal for the Massachusetts-based Class Action.

Segal has matched won-loss records for all the high schools in Eastern Massachusetts with the median incomes of the communities the high schools serve. His number crunching has uncovered a clear pattern. Teams from richer towns regularly win. Teams from poorer towns regularly lose.

....(snip)....

Back in 1970, sociologists Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have detailed, 65 percent of America’s families lived in “middle-income” situations, in neighborhoods where incomes ranged from 80 to 125 percent of the median, or most typical, income of the larger metro area.

By 2008, only 43 percent of U.S. families lived in middle-income neighborhoods. ..................(more)

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