The Dearborn community has experienced a transformation in population of the last ten years. This transformation can be due to a number of issues, but it begins with the surrounding cities not just the city of Dearborn. Examining the current trends and conditions of the Dearborn community, it is important to focus on the population and how it is broken down. There are 96,474 people that live in Dearborn, MI and 89.1% are white. Arab Americans fall under white Americans which are not stated on any census.
It is very difficult analyze sociological demographics when it is not properly separated by ethnicity. Arab Americans represent a large population of the overall Dearborn population. Just like in the city of Detroit, Dearborn is experiencing noticeable relocation. This noticeable relocation has caused deterioration in school diversity, and as a result has created a language barrier issue that affects federal funds.
The most astounding statistic found in the Dearborn Historical Level Data (which came from a survey conducted by the U.
S. Census American Community Survey) was that in the city of Dearborn there are 17,523 individuals that had a bachelor degree or better out of the 97,509 population. This is an astounding statistic because according to the U.S. census bureau states 29% of the population has a bachelor degree or better in Dearborn and only 24% in the state of Michigan. The assumption would be more individuals would have a bachelor degree especially in the city of Dearborn. Living in the city of Dearborn, the assumption is the median income per household is higher than $46,972, and working forty hours a week.
The income per household and the population with a bachelor degree or better has a correlation. Although, U.S. census doesn’t indicate that income was the major issue that has lowered the percentage of individuals who do not graduate from college, but realistically it has to have a correlation.
The question that arises is how we can make Dearborn more desirable that would attract individuals who have a bachelor degree or better to want to live in Dearborn, and have their children attend school in Dearborn. To attract individuals to the city of Dearborn, there has to be a better understanding of the true ethnic composition of the city and also job opportunities that are available. U.S. census lacks diversity in the white alone category. Arab Americans has to represent a large portion of the white alone population. It is imperative to know the portion of Arab Americans when trying to implement change. As it states now, white individuals represent 89.1% of the Dearborn population. It is imperative to know how much of the 89.1% represents the 29% that have a bachelor degree or better. The importance of knowing the correlation of the population and the educational level is to help understand the income level.
Understanding why the income median is $46,972 will have a correlation to job opportunities in the city. Looking at the correlation opens up the doors to households and persons in households. The socioeconomic status of an individual’s parents has always been one of the clear-cut forecasters of the individual’s academic success and educational accomplishment. The correlation between family socioeconomic uniqueness and student accomplishment is one of the most forceful patterns in educational scholarship; however the reasons and means of this relationship have been the subject of significant conflict and debate. The paradoxical outcome of the regularity is thought of a correlation between socioeconomic status and individual’s academic accomplishment as a sociological requirement, rather than as the consequence of a set of social circumstances, strategy options, and educational procedures.
As a result, much of the U.S. census research on the socioeconomic accomplishment has centered around trying to understand the instruments through which socioeconomic dissimilarities among the community based on their income, educational achievement, household structure, age distributions, gender, and age. The trends in socioeconomic accomplishment disparity over an extensive period of time have to base on true ethnic breakdown. It is unknown what the socioeconomic disparity is between white and Arab Americans and what it was ten years ago or even twenty years ago. This is in difference to what the U.S. census knows about the trends in racial-accomplishment disparities, particularly the Arab-white disparity, which has not received significant academic and policy awareness. Trends in socioeconomic accomplishment disparities between individuals from high and low income household or between individuals from household with high or low educational accomplishments have gotten even less attention. Discussion and Recommendations
The difference in accomplishments between individuals from low and high income households can be measured by the differences in the household’s average reading and math skills among the kids in those households at the high end of the household income to the low end of the household income census. When measuring the income accomplishment disparity between Arab Americans and white Americans, the unfairness between the races and the educational discrimination can be shown and reversed. There has to been an effort by the U.S. census to merge the Arab race with the white race in the city of Dearborn, but it has not changed the racial attitudes of the individuals responsible for school and housing principles. The disparity between the wealthy and the unfortunate has grown especially with the households with a number of children. When housing and income policies need to be addressed, it is very difficult make any type of changes when ethnic groups are grouped together. It is hard to determine the true gap when ethnic groups are grouped together.
References
United States Census Bureau. State and County Quick Facts. Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/2621000.html