N.C. unemployment fight being watched across the U.S., By Jordan Friedman, July 21, 2013, USA Today: “Scott Bland of Waxhaw, N.C., is out of work — and the hardships that he and 70,000 other people face have grabbed national headlines. Sparks are flying over a recent change in North Carolina’s unemployment benefits – the elimination of federally-funded compensation – bringing protests to the state capitol and leaving citizens and some legislators up in arms. Unemployment snafus in states across the country aren’t new or unusual. But North Carolina is unique because it’s the only state to cut off access to the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), a program that gives unemployed citizens money after they use up their state benefits…”
Day: July 22, 2013
Geography and Upward Mobility
In climbing income ladder, location matters, By David Leonhardt, July 22, 2013, New York Times: “Stacey Calvin spends almost as much time commuting to her job — on a bus, two trains and another bus — as she does working part-time at a day care center. She knows exactly where to board the train and which stairwells to use at the stations so that she has the best chance of getting to work on time in the morning and making it home to greet her three children after school. ‘It’s a science you just have to perfect over time,’ said Ms. Calvin, 37. Her nearly four-hour round-trip stems largely from the economic geography of Atlanta, which is one of America’s most affluent metropolitan areas yet also one of the most physically divided by income. The low-income neighborhoods here often stretch for miles, with rows of houses and low-slung apartments, interrupted by the occasional strip mall, and lacking much in the way of good-paying jobs. This geography appears to play a major role in making Atlanta one of the metropolitan areas where it is most difficult for lower-income households to rise into the middle class and beyond, according to a new study that other researchers are calling the most detailed portrait yet of income mobility in the United States…”