OVERVIEW: Education, Earnings, and Family Structure in the Annapolis Area

How much education do Annapolis area residents have?
How much do they make?
What kind of families do Annapolis area children live in?

Data from the 2000 Census tell quite a story.
These Census numbers also raise a number of issues.
We know we can do better, but that doesn't mean the right answers are easy to find.

A major education challenge faces the Annapolis area.
Can the next generation of children do better?
Can today's adults return to school and improve their skills?

To a great extent, education differences also show up as income differences.

Low education levels don't appear to depress income levels as much in Hispanic households
as in black households. Roughly half of all black households reported incomes of less
than $30,000 a year, while Hispanic households, with a similarly low "didn't finish high
school" percentage, showed a much smaller portion below $30 thousand a year.

Family structure data from the Census show an amazing range here on the Annapolis peninsula.

Note the large percentage of white households that don't have any children - almost two-thirds!
Of the white households that do have children, less then a quarter are single parent households.
Among African-Americans, though, roughly two-thirds of all households are households with children.
And more than two-thirds of those are single parent households. In the Hispanic community, single
parent households are somewhere in the middle between blacks and whites.

Now take a moment to study the chart on the right. This examines single parent households only.
Following the classic labeling of blue for boys, pink for girls, it shows the ratios of male parents
to female parents, and poverty parents to non-poverty parents.

Among white single parent families, most are female headed, and only a few of those are poverty families.
Among black single parent families, male headed families are equally rare. A substantial portion of
female-headed households are poverty households. The Census 2000 numbers for Hispanics are almost
too low to notice.   Interestingly, though, a majority of single parent households in the
Hispanic community are male-headed.

There are some sad twists here. If your schooling stops while you're still young, if you don't have much
education but you really want to stay out of poverty and give your children a better chance in life,
it's especially important for your children to grow up in a two-parent household that's not stuck in poverty.
More important. But less likely. Leaving school early almost certainly makes it harder to put together
a two-parent family and keep it together.

We know our community can do better. How? What's the best path forward?