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Charts of the week: Teacher strikes, youth turnout, and the inheritance of poverty

Teachers wait to speak to state representatives at the state Capitol on the second day of a teacher walkout to demand higher pay and more funding for education in Oklahoma City

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WHAT HIDDEN FACTORS ARE BEHIND ORGANIZED TEACHER PROTESTS?

Michael Hansen, senior fellow and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy, examines the underlying factors that sparked protests by teachers in West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma in the previous month. Teachers, he writes, are feeling a pinch in their already-low salaries as many states have cut back on education spending in the wake of the Great Recession. He also notes that “after adjusting for inflation most teachers nationwide have less buying power now than they did a decade ago.”

Inflation-adjusted average teacher pay

HIGH TURNOUT AMONG YOUNG VOTERS COULD SHAPE THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS

“A surge in youth interest” in the leadup to this year’s midterm elections could have a dramatic impact on close congressional races according to Darrell West, vice president and director of the Governance Studies program, who cites both the march organized by Parkland, Florida high school students and high turnout among youth voters in recent elections. In Virginia’s 2017 statewide elections, for example, youth turnout was 34 percent, more than double what it was for Virginia’s 2009 elections and higher than in the 2014 midterms.

ALMOST HALF OF BLACK YOUTHS GREW UP IN THE BOTTOM INCOME QUINTILE

In a new report on the inheritance of black poverty, Scott Winship, Katherine Guyot, and Senior Fellow Richard Reeves analyze why black Americans are much less likely to move up the income ladder than other racial groups, especially white men. Their study shows that nearly half of black youths aged 14 to 16 have parents in the bottom fifth of income distribution, and that 54 percent of boys in that group will remain in the bottom income quintile of their gender as adults.

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