LOS ANGELES -- It's no surprise that some residents of the L.A. area are thriving, while others are merely surviving. But a new report released today provides, for the first time, an easy to understand, composite number that measures the well-being of Los Angeles residents in the areas of health, education and income.
A Portrait of California uses the internationally-recognized Human Development Index to rank how Los Angeles residents are doing against key benchmarks, broken out by demographic, geographic and other distinctions.
Prepared by the American Human Development Project, the index is calculated using standard government data that is weighted equally to come up with a composite score with 10 being the highest possible. These include life expectancy at birth and mortality rates to measure health; age of school enrollment and educational degree attainment to measure education; and median earnings to measure people's standard of living/income. The Los Angeles metro area, which includes Los Angelesand Orange counties, scored 5.52 on the scale, slightly better than the state as a whole (5.46). But, major variation exists when you look at where people live in the region, as well as ethnicity and gender. Elise Buik, President & CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said: "Education, health and income really are the building blocks for a good life. And there remain wide disparities and a huge gulf between the haves and have nots in our region. In our work to create pathways out of poverty, we've been focused on improving outcomes in these areas for some time. This report further underscores why our efforts to change the conditions that keep people in poverty, such as improving the high school graduation rate and providing housing stability, are so important." Key Findings for Los Angeles: Health: A baby born today in the Los Angeles metro area can expect to live 80.7 years, about half a year longer than the average for the state and two years longer than the average for the nation. But this average obscures staggering variation: Education: The Los Angeles metro area has relatively high levels of bachelor's and higher degrees alongside tremendous challenges with basic educational attainment. For example: Income: Median personal earnings in the Los Angeles area are around $29,000 per year. This represents the wages and salaries of the typical worker 16 years of age and over. Median earnings in L.A. are roughly equal to the typical earnings of workers inCalifornia and in the nation as a whole. However, earnings vary extensively by race/ethnicity and by neighborhood: United Ways of Greater Los Angeles has many programs that seek to address these disparities: About United Way of Greater Los Angeles United Way of Greater Los Angeles is a nonprofit organization that creates pathways out of poverty by helping homeless people move into housing, providing students with the support they need to graduate high school prepared for college and the workforce, and helping hard-working families become financially stable. United Way identifies the root causes of poverty and works strategically to solve them by building alliances across all sectors, funding targeted programs and advocating for change.