4. Poverty Levels by Race
links:
introduction (1)
race (2)
SAT scores (6)
other education (7)
conclusion (9)
all maps (10)
all scatter plots (11)
bibliography (12)
Because the relationship between median household income and AIDS rates was not as strong as anticipated, the next objective was to factor in race as a function of household income as well as poverty levels. Strong relationships between these factors (economics and race) and AIDS cases would logically correlate, because as (previously) shown by the scatter plots, the poorer towns have higher numbers of African Americans and Hispanics, as well as higher incidence of AIDS. (The media has also given this impression.)
The poverty level in Connecticut is defined, for a family of four as having a gross income of less than $20,650; while at the national level, the poverty level is defined as income less than $18,850 for a family of four. Each population (white, black, and Hispanic) living under this poverty level proved to have very strong correlations with AIDS.
The relationship between the rate of the white population living under the poverty level and the AIDS rate for each town came out to a surprisingly strong 0.9339, showing that the majority of the AIDS cases in the white population of the area seem to be more or less found in those living in an unfortunate economic situation.
The correlations of 0.7627 in the black population and 0.7369 in the Hispanic population are significant as well, suggesting that while all of the AIDS cases in these populations are not related to poor economic standing, the contribution of this factor does appear to be large.
The city of Hartford itself greatly affects the correlations—it is a clear outlier on the graphs, and evidently holds great weight in Hartford County’s problems as a whole. If the city of Hartford is excluded from the calculations than the correlation for the white population living under the poverty level remains high at 0.854054, as does that for the Hispanic population at 0.669703.
The black population living under the poverty level in Hartford evidently has a huge impact on the entire county, because the association decreases significantly to 0.473479.
