Remember when I griped that some know-it-alls thought that the cure for what ails Detroit is to import 50,000 Syrians? And, earlier, I had similarly complained about Jeb Bush’s similar solution, bringing in “dynamic” “hard-working” immigrants, by means of, presumably, some requirement that immigrants under some special visa be required to live in Detroit.
But in reading about Hamtramck and Highland Park for my pair of posts from earlier this week, I poked around at what I could find about this trio of cities. Wikipedia will tell you that
As of the 2010 American Community Survey, 14.5% of Hamtramck’s population is of Polish origin;[7] in 1970, it was 90% Polish.[8]
Over the past thirty years, a large number of immigrants from the Middle East (especially Yemen), South Asia (especially Bangladesh), and Southeastern Europe(especially Bosnia and Herzegovina) have moved to the city. As of the 2010 American Community Survey, the city’s foreign born population stood at 41.1%,[9] making it Michigan’s most internationally diverse city.
The demographic differences between Hamtramck and its enclave-sister Highland Park are all the more stark in poking around at the data at statisticalatlas.com — here are the links for Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Detroit. (This is a pretty cool site, with lots of data — it’s a .com but I can’t really figure where the business comes in — there are no ads, no subscriber requirements.)
And here are some stats:
National origin — % of population that’s US-born citizens:
Highland Park — 99%
Detroit — 94.2%
Hamtramck — 49.1% (with 6.4% born-abroad citizens, 24.3% naturalized citizens, and 20.1% non-citizens).
Which — considering that, while Hamtramck has lost population since its peak nearly to the same extent as Detroit and Highland Park, it lost its population earlier and has stablized, and is actually higher now than in 1980, would seem to prove Jeb’s point that the way to avoid the bleeding of population experienced by both Highland Park and Detroit is to import immigrants.
And, heck, the immigrants bring with them some favorable characteristics:
Percent of households with children under age 18 which consist of two married parents:
Hamtramck — 72.7% (vs. 20.4% single moms and 7% single dads)
Detroit — 30% (vs. 59.3% single moms, and 10.7% single dads)
Highland Park — 16.8% (vs. 65.8% single moms and 17.4% single dads)
And they are slightly more likely to be entrepreneurs:
Percent of workers who are self-employed or sole proprietors
Hamtramck — 7.9% (77.2% private sector, remainder non-profit or gov’t)
Highland Park — 6.2% (65.2% private sector, rem. non-profit/govt)
Detroit — 5.7% (vs. 69.7% private)
But what’s the big picture? While Hamtramck isn’t bleeding population, is isn’t any more prosperous than Highland Park or Detroit. All three cities have had emergency managers due to financial troubles, and here are the headline stats from my prior post:
Hamtramck – poverty rate 43.5%; per capital money income $10,890
Highland Park – poverty rate 51.1%; per capita money income $13,539
Detroit – poverty rate 39.3%; per capita money income $14.870
And, digging deeper, here are some more differences and similarities between the three cities:
Employment patterns — % of working-age (25 – 64) not in the labor market
Hamtramck — 48.6% (59.7% of women, 38.1% of men)
Highland Park — 55.1% (55.1% of women, 55% of men)
Detroit — 46.6% (47.5% of women, 45.6% of men)
Now, in Hamtramck, a greater percentage of the non-working women are stay-at-home moms in two-parent families, and the labor force participant rate for men is indeed higher.
Among families with children under 18, the percent of households with stay-at-home moms are:
Hamtramck — 50.5%
Highland Park — 51.4%
Detroit — 28%
(Remember, there are a lot more two-parent families in Hamtramck.)
A couple more stats:
Education — percent of those ages 25+ without a high school diploma:
Hamtramck — 35.2%
Highland Park — 26.2%
Detroit — 22.4%
(Yeah, I didn’t expect the figure would be that low for Detroit, given the high drop-out rates you read about; it is ages 25 and up, so maybe there are a lot of GEDs in the mix.)
and
Percent of households using food stamps
Hamtramck — 42.8%
Highland Park — 51.0%
Detroit — 40.3%
So, look, I’m a geek about data. I could cite stats ’til the cows come home, though, without access to more sophisticated research I can’t do much with it except to say:
Yes, the fact that Hamtramck became a destination for immigrants prevented it from losing population in the way that Detroit and Highland Park have in the last several decades, which is certainly a good thing, just from the fact that a city needs a certain level of density to pay for infrastructure. But to imagine that immigrants are going to bring wealth? The statistics suggest otherwise.
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