The Opportunity Atlas, a new data tool, allows us to answer the question: Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty? The big news is that the data found no association between job growth and economic mobility for poor residents. What ended up happening when there were hiring booms is that disadvantaged local residents were bypassed.
Baltimore’s “Old Town” neighborhood near Johns Hopkins Hospital is an example of the myth of job growth curing poverty: “Connecting its residents with employers has proved problematic, as it has in poor communities across the country. The disparity between residents and workers in the neighborhood suggests that the jobs have gone to people who either live in other, more prosperous neighborhoods or who commute from the surrounding suburbs.”
Healthcare Anchor Network members are utilizing targeted inclusion strategies for local hiring and purchasing, and place-based investing, to support local economic ecosystems and help generate community wealth.