includes Koreantown and Westlake/Pico Union as well as South-Central), the population is now 49% Hispanic. And immigrants account for more than 60% of metropolitan Los Angeles's growth of three million over the last decade. In the Los Angeles School district recent immigrant children (those in the U.S. for three years or less) make up 10 percent of total enrollement and, under current trends, will increase by 10% a year (Rand, 1992). In 1965, schools in the Los Angeles School District were 70% Anglo; today enrollement is approximately 64 percent Hispanic, 15 percent African-American, 13 percent Anglo, and eight percent Asian-American and Pacific Islander. (City in Crisis, 1992).
According to a recent Rand study (1992) the income and wage inequality gap in the city of Los Angeles has grown wider than the national average. Real income fell 17 percent between 1973 and 1990 for a family of four near the bottom of the income distribution compared, with a 9% drop nationally. Income rose 22% for those near the top in L.A. compared with 12% nationally.
For wages, the trend was similar to the national pattern with sharp drops in real wages for male workers both at the bottom and in the middle wage distribution.
City-wide 18.5% live below the poverty level, with a quarter of household having incomes below 15,000 and 14% with incomes above $75,000. The poverty rates for families with children under 18 is 38% in South Central L.A. and the poverty rates for Hispanics (24%) and Blacks (26%) in Los Angeles is twice as high as for whites (12% and Asians (13%), (Rand, 1992). In South Central L.A. poverty rates are higher for both single and two-parent families,reaching 51% for female-headed black famililes and 64% for female-headed Hispanic families. The high rate of poverty among female-headed black families has an especially large effect since, in Los Angeles County,the percentage of black female-headed household (48%) is three t...