"Figures are for non-incarcerated adults who are 25 to 54."
The New York Times
1.5 Million Missing Black Men
By JUSTIN WOLFERS, DAVID LEONHARDT and KEVIN QUEALY
In New York, almost 120,000 black men
between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In
Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia.
Across the South — from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama
and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo. — hundreds of thousands more
are missing.
They are missing, largely because of
early deaths or because they are behind bars. Remarkably, black women
who are 25 to 54 and not in jail outnumber black men in that category by
1.5 million, according to an Upshot analysis.
For every 100 black women in this age group living outside of jail,
there are only 83 black men. Among whites, the equivalent number is 99,
nearly parity.
African-American men have long been
more likely to be locked up and more likely to die young, but the scale
of the combined toll is nonetheless jarring. It is a measure of the deep
disparities that continue to afflict black men — disparities being
debated after a recent spate of killings by the police — and the gender
gap is itself a further cause of social ills, leaving many communities
without enough men to be fathers and husbands.
Perhaps the starkest description of the
situation is this: More than one out of every six black men who today
should be between 25 and 54 years old have disappeared from daily life.
“The numbers are staggering,” said Becky Pettit, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas.
And what is the city with at least
10,000 black residents that has the single largest proportion of missing
black men? Ferguson, Mo., where a fatal police shooting
last year led to nationwide protests and a Justice Department
investigation that found widespread discrimination against black
residents. Ferguson has 60 men for every 100 black women in the age
group, Stephen Bronars, an economist, has noted.
The gap in North Charleston, site of a police shooting
this month, is also considerably more severe than the nationwide
average, as is the gap in neighboring Charleston. Nationwide, the
largest proportions of missing men generally can be found in the South,
although there are also many similar areas across the Midwest and in
many big Northeastern cities. The gaps tend to be smallest in the West.
Incarceration and early deaths are the
overwhelming drivers of the gap. Of the 1.5 million missing black men
from 25 to 54 — which demographers call the prime-age years — higher
imprisonment rates account for almost 600,000. Almost 1 in 12 black men
in this age group are behind bars, compared with 1 in 60 nonblack men in
the age group, 1 in 200 black women and 1 in 500 nonblack women.
Higher mortality is the other main
cause. About 900,000 fewer prime-age black men than women live in the
United States, according to the census. It’s impossible to know
precisely how much of the difference is the result of mortality, but it
appears to account for a big part. Homicide, the leading cause of death
for young African-American men, plays a large role, and they also die
from heart disease, respiratory disease and accidents more often than other demographic groups, including black women.
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