Sixty years of growth. Not everyone was counted in it.
The economy grew and Americans lived longer on average. Underneath those averages, whole places fell behind and the instruments meant to catch them kept missing.
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
In 1896 Du Bois walked Philadelphia's Seventh Ward door to door. He understood you cannot study a people from a distance and call the result knowledge. Nia carries that lineage forward.
The numbers behind the compounding.
Bottom 50% wealth share, 1989 to 2020
The top 1 percent rose from 22.8% to 30.6% over the same period.
Median family wealth, Black vs white, 2019
A ratio that has barely moved in thirty years.
Life expectancy, 2020
Down 1.8 years from 2019 in the steepest single-year decline since 1943.
The Black-white life expectancy gap reopened
Non-Hispanic Black life expectancy: 71.5 years in 2020 against 77.4 for white Americans.
Men's labor force participation, 1960 to 2020
A record low. Women's rose from 37.7% to 56.2%.
Rural working-age mortality vs urban, 2019
Up from 6% in 1999. Rural rates rose while urban rates fell.
Five forces are landing at once.
Each one lands hardest where disinvestment already did its work.
Climate
2018 to 2022 avg.
NOAA NCEI
Automation
Where transit and childcare are thinnest.
Wealth gap
Black vs white median, 2019.
Fed SCF
Pandemics
Black life expectancy, one year.
CDC NCHS
Rural poverty
Rural vs urban, ages 25 to 54.
USDA ERS
The instruments
keep missing.
Traditional outreach reaches about 15 percent. Nia's trained, paid community researchers reach 70 to 85 percent. That is not marginal. It is the difference between building on assumptions and building on what a neighborhood actually reported.
Who gets counted?
One hundred residents. Switch the method.
JST program data.
See the evidence in your context.
A briefing walks through what these numbers mean for your place.
Request a briefing