Courtesy of DataHaven
The non-profit organization Datahaven has released its latest edition Community Wellbeing Index Report for the Greater New Haven area on March 3, revealing widening disparities in the quality of life for residents of various demographic groups.
Local residents of different racial backgrounds, income levels, residential areas, and age groups were given a “well-being index,” which the researchers calculated by assessing trends in various social determinants. Factors considered include educational access and outcomes, poverty rates, encounters with the criminal justice system, homelessness, and experiences with the health care system, all of which demonstrate large differences in the overall well-being of people living in the same region .
The City of New Haven scored 389 out of 1,000 on the Community Well-Being Index, far below the scores of other large New Haven cities — most of which scored above 900 — and the state as a whole.
“It’s sobering how some of the big issues of today come out in this study, like housing prices — how rents have risen and how high the cost burden is,” said Matthew Higbee of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, which helped writing the report. “We simply believe that accurate and reliable data about our community is essential to marking progress.”
The report combines the individual responses of more than 40,000 residents to Datahaven surveys and live interviews with records from local police departments, state and local departments of education and public health, housing and real estate agencies, the U.S. Census and other public sources.
Using such sources, the Index includes scores from 0 to 1,000 for “community well-being,” which takes into account statistics on social determinants such as home ownership and childhood poverty, as well as “personal well-being” based on the self-reported experiences of community members .
Within Greater New Haven, black and Hispanic populations received lower well-being scores than white populations, which researchers and community representatives attributed to a long history of systemic racism. The report also highlighted forms of racial segregation in neighborhoods that impact quality of life, which Datahaven CEO Mark Abraham redlined.
“A lot of neighborhoods in Connecticut for a long time wouldn’t allow people of color to move into them,” Abraham told the News. “And there are many other policies that have effectively prevented black residents in the state from accumulating wealth over time. And it’s also especially obvious if you look at things like, does the neighbor have healthy trees and parks? So neighborhoods that are affluent often have well-kept trees, and that affects your health.
White residents of Greater New Haven are far more likely to live near other white people than any other demographic group, according to the report. Whiter, low-diversity neighborhoods are also more likely to have higher incomes.
Residents of New Haven generally experience greater economic hardship than residents of neighboring cities and the state. According to the report, a quarter of New Haven residents live in poverty and 49 percent are considered low-income; Connecticut’s poverty and low-income rates are less than half of New Haven’s statistics.
“A lot of times people will think of Connecticut as a prosperous area, which it generally is, but there are still communities in the state that are struggling,” Abraham said.
In several areas, the report demonstrates the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prosperity of the entire community, as well as its role in exacerbating social disparities. From 2020 to 2022, house prices rose seven times faster than in the previous two years; monthly rents rose more than three times as fast. Although governments aimed to ease the burden of housing costs during the pandemic through eviction moratoriums, monthly eviction applications eventually began to far exceed pre-pandemic levels.
“Chronic truancy” — which occurs when a student misses at least 10 percent of classes in the school year — has skyrocketed due to the pandemic, hitting black and Latino students the hardest, as well as those eligible for free and reduced-price meals. prices. Despite the return to full-time study, rates remain high.
“Regardless of where this trend goes over the next few years, there is some concern that it could have an impact on families for many years because this was just a lot of missed school,” Abraham said. “For five or 10 years, it could affect whether people will have graduated or will be ready to go to college.”
Abraham further emphasized the importance of incorporating holistic measures of well-being into outcomes, which Datahaven prioritized through surveys and interviews with individuals.
These measures focus on self-reported experiences, with the report finding links between a person’s race or income and the likelihood of having reliable access to transportation, experiencing mental health problems, and experiencing threats of eviction, for example. A higher percentage of people of color report having problems with each of these life factors than white people.
Experiences with gun violence also greatly affected residents’ trust in their local communities and sense of overall safety. 13 percent of New Haven residents report witnessing a shooting in the past year, and 47 percent of residents say they fear gun violence. While 87 percent of Connecticut residents agree that they trust their neighbors, only 67 percent of New Haven residents say the same.
At the launch of the DataHaven report at the state capitol on March 13, researcher Kelly Davila spoke about the relationship between shooting experiences, feelings of personal safety, incarceration and housing stability in regions, emphasizing that various factors of well-being are intertwined.
“Research is increasingly showing that housing stability — both in terms of financial stability for the people in the homes and housing rehabilitation — is associated with reductions in gun violence,” Davila said. “We see the same relationship and trends in areas where people report it’s a nice place to raise children and areas where you feel safer at night.”
The surveys also asked for residents’ personal views on community issues, including whether they believe local children will succeed later in life, whether they believe other community members will find adequate access to work, and whether they approve of local police and government .
Compared to 76 percent of white residents, 54 percent of Hispanic residents and 45 percent of black residents in Greater New Haven said they approve of local police, with an average of 68 percent approval across the region. The approval rating from Connecticut police overall was even higher at 75 percent. In the city of New Haven, it’s 42 percent.
Contributors and researchers stressed that they hope the report’s findings will guide policymakers, particularly in addressing deep-rooted social and economic inequalities.
“I hope [leaders] strive to have outcomes that reduce the disparities we see in the index based on race and where people live,” Higbee said. “Really everyone in every organization, whether it’s government, nonprofit, or the private sector, is thinking about ways to work differently so that we as a society can start to reduce the disparities that we see and create more opportunities.”
As of 2020, New Haven is home to approximately 135,081 people.