Rich-poor gap grew in 1990s, new report says
MARCH 2, 2005
Marin Independent Journal
By Jim Welte
IJ reporter

Wednesday, March 02, 2005 - Disparity widest in Marin; more kids in poverty

During the boomtime 1990s, the income gap between the rich and poor in Marin and throughout the North Bay swelled significantly, leaving substantially more working families and children living in poverty, according to a new study released yesterday.

"The North Bay faces a growing crisis of working poverty," the 81-page report concluded. "The incomes of the richest one-fifth have grown at staggering rates, while those of the middle and the bottom have grown sluggishly, or actually declined."

Among the five Northern California counties surveyed, the economic disparity grew fastest in Marin between 1989 and 1999.

In that period, the average income of the top one-fifth of working families in Marin increased by 38 percent to $326,000 a year, while that of the bottom one-fifth actually declined by 2 percent to $28,300 per year - a 40-point spread between the top and bottom.

The study found that 18 percent of children in Marin live in poverty. That number was lower than the other Northern California counties studied, with 23 percent of children in Sonoma County living in poverty, 31 percent in Napa County and 51 percent in Mendocino County.

The 81-page report, called "The Limits of Prosperity: Growth, Inequality and Poverty in the North Bay," used standard U.S. Census and state employment data, including demographic, employment, income and poverty figures since 1979 in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties. It is the first study to focus specifically on overall income gains for each level of wage earners.

The study concluded that the widening gap between rich and poor in Marin and throughout the North Bay has created an "hourglass economy" in which the middle class is continually thinning as the concentration of both high-wage and low-wage earners grows.

"We're stripping out one of the biggest insulators to an unstable economy - the middle class," said Ben Boyce, the coordinator of the Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County, one of the co-sponsors of the report. "Those jobs are just disappearing."

That trend is likely to continue, the study concluded.

According to California Employment Development Department data, the lowest-wage jobs will increase by 30 percent between 2001 and 2008, far outpacing higher-wage jobs that earn between $16 and $28 per hour. Those jobs are all projected to increase by less than 5 percent in the counties surveyed, according to state figures.

Boyce said the goal of the report was to present data that will help a wide variety of advocacy groups, including his, to push for their respective solutions to the problem. While some economists push for better education and more workplace training, Boyce's organization hopes to garner a county-wide and region-wide living wage increase.

The study was sponsored by New Economy, Working Solutions, a nonprofit research and education organization backed by a coalition of labor, religious and community groups in the North Bay. It was financed and conducted by the University of California at Berkeley's Institute for Labor and Employment as well as foundation grants and donations from unions.

Contact Jim Welte via e-mail at jwelte@marinij.com.