Report Shows Ethnic Shifts In Philly

A new research report from Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative shows racial patterns in the city of Philadelphia have shifted in the past 20 years. In addition, Census data show a big shift in money to the suburbs in same time period.

Combined with other data publicly available from the Census Bureau (and not included in the Pew report), the numbers show a shift in money, as well as ethnic patterns in Philadelphia and its four neighboring counties in Pennsylvania.

The Pew research looks at the past 20 years of local population trends in the city and it shows that 31 percent of the white population has left Philadelphia since 1990.

"Since 1990, the city's white population has fallen by nearly a third. The black population has shifted to new parts of the city. The Asian population has more than doubled. And the rapidly growing His-panic population has expanded far beyond its traditional home in eastern North Philadelphia," says Pew.

Northeast Philadelphia has seen the biggest change in the past 20 years, where it went from 92 percent white in 1990 to 58.3 percent white in 2010.

But despite losing one-third of its white residents, Northeast Philadelphia's population grew by 5.4 percent, Pew says, because of new arrivals.

Overall, in 1990 about 52 percent of Philadelphia was white, but by 2010, just 37 percent of the city was white, while 42 percent was black, 12 percent was Hispanic and 6 percent was Asian.

"The number of white residents lost by the city, 263,254, is larger than the entire population of Buffalo, N.Y.," the Pew report says.

But the research shows that the population of Center City grew more than 42 percent, due to an influx of white residents.

The area that saw the biggest population loss was the North Broad Street corridor, from Susquehanna Avenue north to the city line, which saw its total population decline by 17.7 percent since 1990

Recent Census Bureau data show that 24.5 percent of Philadelphia's population was living in poverty in 2009 , compared with 21 percent in 1989.

But outside Philadelphia, its more wealthy neighbors have benefitted in the past 20 years.

In fact, Montgomery County is now richer than the city of Philadelphia, by measuring the income of all households in both counties.

Source: US Census Bureau, American Fact Finder

In 2009, Montgomery County had a total household income of $22.3 billion, compared with $21.8 billion for the city of Philadelphia. Two decades ago, Philly had $14.7 billion in household income, compared with $11 billion for Montgomery County.

In all, the five counties generated $87.6 billion in income in 2009, with Philadelphia getting a 25 percent share of the pie.

But Philadelphia's share in 1989 was 31 percent, meaning that Philadelphia would have had an extra $5.2 billion a year to tax in 2009 if its income had stayed the same relative to the other four counties.

In that 20-year period, Philadelphia lost about 11,000 households while the four suburban counties added 89,000 households and 277,000 people.

About 85 percent of the population of the four suburban counties was classified as white in 2009, compared with 91 percent in 1989.

By The Numbers is a regular MyFoxPhilly feature that looks at key Philadelphia issues behind publicly available numbers and research.
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