HALVE THE GAP YOUTH DISCONNECTION BY 2030 IN AMERICA’S CITIES

DALLAS–FT. WORTH METRO AREA CLOSE-UP

KRISTEN LEWIS and SARAH BURD-SHARPS

2013 GAP: 30.3 2013 GAP: (PERCENTAGE POINTS) (PERCENTAGE 15.7

GAP IN YOUTH DISCONNECTION RATE RATE DISCONNECTION IN YOUTH GAP 2030 2030 TARGET: TARGET: 7.9 15.2 Racial/ethnic groups Neighborhood clusters

Patrick Nolan Guyer | CHIEF STATISTICIAN & CARTOGRAPHER Diana Tung | REPORT DESIGN

TO DOWNLOAD THIS REPORT, PLEASE VISIT MEASURE OF AMERICA WWW.MEASUREOFAMERICA.ORG/HALVE-THE-GAP-2030 of the Social Science Research Council YOUTH DISCONNECTION IN THE DALLAS–FT. WORTH 16 METRO AREA

35 377

75

77 77 380 377 380 380 380 35W Denton TOP 35 West Plano, Collin County 6.2% 399

75 35E

287 Lewisville Lake Plano

377 81 5 190 170 35E Richardson 5

81

121 635 635 635 35E West Fork 97 Trinity River 161 Irving 348 244 121 289 820 377 10 26 183 30 635 183 121 356 Dallas 183 354 377 30 80 352 199 35W 30 199 180 180 287 180 35E BOTTOM 377 Fort Worth 310 Fair Park,175 West 183 287 Arlington 35E Dallas, and Northwest Dallas 635 20 287 34.4%20 175 310 DISCONNECTED YOUTH 35E Trinity River 1.8% - 9.1%

9.2% - 12.0% 287 75 12.1% - 15.1%

45 15.2% - 19.0% 35E

77 19.1% - 36.5% 287

outside metro area DALLAS–FT. WORTH DALLAS–FT. landmark 0 5 10 miles N 77 16

287

0 5 10 Miles 75 287 About the Dallas–Ft. Worth Metro Area Close-Up

This document is an excerpt from Halve the Gap by 2030: Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities. It portrays in detail the landscape of youth disconnection in the Dallas–Ft. Worth Metro Area, with a map of the metro area; identification of the neighborhood highs and lows; youth disconnection rates by race, ethnicity, and gender; and key well-being indicators to provide context.

Who Are Disconnected Youth: Definition and Data Sources

Disconnected youth are people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working. Young people in this age range who are working or in school part-time or who are in the military are not considered disconnected. Youth disconnection rates in this report are calculated by Measure of America using employment and enrollment data from the 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) of the US Census Bureau. For further details, see the Note on Methods and Definitions.

Several official data sources exist that can be used for calculating youth disconnection. As a result, researchers working with different data sets, or different definitions of what constitutes disconnection, arrive at different numbers for this indicator. Measure of America uses the ACS for four reasons: (1) it is reliable and updated annually; (2) it allows for calculations by state and metro area as well as by the more granular census-defined neighborhood clusters within metro areas; (3) it includes young people who are in group quarters, such as juvenile or adult correctional facilities, supervised medical facilities, and college dorms; and (4) it counts students on summer break as being enrolled in school.

MEASUREOFAMERICA

Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, provides easy-to-use yet methodologically sound tools for understanding well-being and opportunity in the United States and to stimulate fact-based dialogue about issues we all care about: health, education, and living standards. The root of this work is the human development and capabilities approach, the brainchild of Harvard professor and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.

Human development is about improving people’s well-being and expanding their choices and opportunities to live freely chosen lives of value. The period of young adulthood is critical to developing the capabilities required for a full and flourishing life: knowledge and credentials, social skills and networks, a sense of mastery and agency, an understanding of one’s strengths and preferences, and the ability to handle stressful events and regulate one’s emotions, to name just a few. Measure of America is thus concerned with youth disconnection because it stunts human development, closing off some of life’s most rewarding and joyful paths and leading to a future of limited horizons and unrealized potential. DALLAS–FT. WORTH DALLAS–FT. www.measureofamerica.org 16 KEY WELL-BEING INDICATORS

HD Index: 5.18 out of 10

HD Index ranking: 16th out of 24

Total population: 6,569,112

Adult unemployment rate: 7.0%

Adults with at least bachelor’s degree: 31.4%

Poverty rate: 15.8%

Youth unemployment rate (ages 16–24): 19.5%

School enrollment rate (ages 16–24): 59.8%

Sources: Measure of America 2013-2014 and U.S. Census Bureau, 2011.

The Dallas–Fort Worth metro area is comprised of thirteen Texas counties—Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hood, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Somervell, Tarrant, and Wise. The youth disconnection rate in greater Dallas is 14.9 percent; approximately 128,000 teens and young adults there are not working or in school. Dallas trails Houston, but performs slighty better than San Antonio.

Youth Disconnection by Race and Ethnicity How Do Racial and Ethnic Groups White youth experience the lowest rate of youth disconnection, 12.4 Compare to Each Other and to percent, followed by Latinos (17.6 percent), and then African Americans Their National Counterparts? (19.3 percent). Latinos and African Americans in Dallas–Fort Worth Dallas–Ft. Worth experience youth disconnection rates below the national averages for United States those groups, but white young people in Dallas are slightly more likely to be disconnected than their counterparts elsewhere. The gap between 12.4% WHITES the most and least connected racial and ethnic group is 6.9 percentage 11.7% points. 17.6% LATINOS Dallas is one of ten metro areas among the twenty-five most populous 17.9% where whites do not make up the majority of residents. The proportion 19.3% of Latinos in the city is almost double the national average. Dallas is AFRICAN AMERICANS 22.5% home to too few Asian American young people to calculate a youth disconnection rate for that group. 0 5 10 15 20 25 DALLAS–FT. WORTH DALLAS–FT. WORTH DALLAS–FT.

HALVE THE GAP BY 2030 | Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities 16 Youth Disconnection by Gender Halve the Gap in Dallas

Like Houston, Dallas departs from the national pattern when it comes to 30 youth disconnection by gender. Young women in these cities are more disengaged and disconnected than their male counterparts. In Dallas– 25 Fort Worth, 16.1 percent of young women are disconnected, compared to 13.8 percent of young men. A noteworthy finding is that the three Texas 20 metro areas in this study have the highest rates of teenage motherhood 28.2 among the twenty-five most populatious metro areas. 15

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(PERCENTAGE POINTS) (PERCENTAGE 6.9 Youth Disconnection by Neighborhood 5 3.5 14.1 0 The range of youth disconnection among Dallas–Fort Worth’s thirty-nine RATE DISCONNECTION IN YOUTH GAP Racial/ethnic Neighborhood neighborhood clusters is among the largest of the most populous metro groups clusters areas in the country. In West Plano and the surrounding communities in Collin County, 6.2 percent of young people are out of work and out of school, while in Fair Park, West and Northwest Dallas, the value is 34.4 percent. This neighborhood cluster is, in fact, the district with the third highest rate of youth disconnection of the nearly nine hundred neighborhood clusters that make up the major metro areas studied. The gap between the most and least connected neighborhoods in the metro area is an astonishing 28.2 percentage points.

Most Connected Neighborhood Clusters

RATE OF YOUTH NEIGHBORHOOD DISCONNECTION (%)

West Plano, Collin County, TX 6.2

Greater Denton, The Colony and Sanger, Denton County, TX 7.9

Allen, Wylie and Princeton, Collin County, TX 9.0

Least Connected Neighborhood Clusters

RATE OF YOUTH NEIGHBORHOOD DISCONNECTION (%)

Oak Cliff and South Dallas, TX 25.0

Southeast Dallas, Buckner Terrace, Everglade Park, Pleasant Grove and Kle- 25.1 berg, Dallas, TX

Fair Park, West Dallas and Northwest Dallas, Dallas, TX 34.4 DALLAS–FT. WORTH DALLAS–FT.

HALVE THE GAP BY 2030 | Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities 16