I've finished comparing Black Enterprise's list of the top 10 cities for African-Americans with A.G. Edwards' "Nest Egg Index", which ranks cities where residents are doing better at building wealth against those where they aren't.
Only one city on the Black Enterprise list, Washington, D.C., was also in A.G. Edwards' top ten. It came in at number eight. The only other top black city in the top 100 on the nest egg list was Baltimore, at number 60 -- and those two cities are so close that they're really part of one big metro area. Atlanta, Black Enterprise's number one city for black folks, ranked 123d on the nest egg ranking.
It's hard to say definitively what this all means, but there are a few ways to look at it.
Black folks have smaller incomes, fewer assets, and lower rates of homeownership, on average than whites. So it follows that 'blacker' cities would not fare well in a comparison based on A.G. Edwards' criteria, which factored in a dozen variables -- from income, to home values, to homeownership rates, debt and investment trends .
Many of the cities that scored higher on the A.G. Edwards list did so for reasons that could make them bad places for a young person of any race to try to build a nest egg, and the opposite is true for lower-ranked cities.
Boston, for example, ranked 13th on the list, despite its enormous cost of living and overblown housing market. By A.G. Edwards' standards, higher home values boosted a city's nest egg standing. But Boston would be less attractive to anyone trying to get his or her financial sea legs, while Atlanta, who's lower home values hurt it in the nest-egg rankings, would be much more attractive.
However you slice it, here's what the data showed:
City-- Black Enterprise Rank-- A.G. Edwards "nest egg" rank
Atlanta --1 -- 123
Washington, D.C. -- 2 -- 8
Dallas -- 3 -- 343
Nashville -- 4 -- 303
Houston -- 5 -- 455
Charlotte -- 6 -- 173
Birmingham, Ala. -- 7 -- unranked
Memphis -- 8 -- unranked
Columbus, Ohio -- 9 -- 238
Baltimore -- 10 -- 60
Sources: A.G. Edwards; Blackenterprise.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I'm cuious...what are you trying to say? that black folks should have higher standards? What was the Black Enterprise list based on?
I know for me personally, that it's important to live with other black professionals, and there are only a handful of places that that's possible.
go charlotte. i think its a great place to build wealth. the cost of living isn't astronomical and there are some great jobs making good money.
Post a Comment