How Neighborhoods Price Out People of Color, Tracking Deaths of Despair, and More

July 17, 2020

“Whether or not expensive communities intend to bar entry to lower-income households, high housing costs are as prohibitive a barrier as more overt forms of discrimination.” New research from Jenny Schuetz shows how America’s exclusive communities have priced out Black and Latino households, as well as renters of all races.

Deaths of despair—deaths due to drug, alcohol, and suicide—have taken 1 million lives since 1999, primarily among white people with less than a college education. Carol Graham and Sergio Pinto share a new interactive tool which allows users to view and compare state-level trends in well-being and county-level trends in deaths of despair.

“If the United States does not lead, if it does not stimulate and catalyze innovation both for itself and the community of democracies, the results could be catastrophic, creating the opportunity for authoritarian and illiberal regimes to dominate key technologies in the 21st century,” write Brookings President John R. Allen and Darrell West.

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