Authors: Daniel Schneider and Benjamin Bowyer, University of California, Berkeley | Jacob Leos-Urbel and Jamie Austin, Tipping Point Community
The Bay Area is a place of opportunity, but also a place of incredible inequality and deprivation. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was being described as a “great equalizer,” with all Americans—rich and poor, White and people of color—at risk of exposure to this deadly virus. But, as the outbreak took hold across the United States, it has laid bare the deep class and racial inequalities that plague America.
The “Poverty, Insecurity, and Privilege in the Bay Area,”paper from Taking Count, describes the scope and character of economic deprivation in the Bay Area in the months before the COVID-19 outbreak. We provide a local spotlight that is often hard to glean from national statistics. But we also, for the first time, gauge the volatility in economic well-being that Bay Area families face.
READ “POVERTY, INSECURITY, AND PRIVILEGE IN THE BAY AREA
ABOUT TAKING COUNT
Tipping Point conducted the Taking Count study in the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. Taking Count establishes a critical baseline for the number of people experiencing poverty in the Bay Area just months before the outbreak of COVID-19. Read the full report, here.
