Giving Compass' Take:

• Philanthropy News Digest reports on how poverty in New York City remains more prevalent than in the rest of the country, especially for women and people of color.

• Why does New York trail behind the rest of the country in poverty rates? How do racial inequities in New York poverty rates parallel those across the nation? What can we do to change that?

• Learn about a different kind of poverty across the country.

Although the poverty rate in New York City has fallen since 2012, it remains significantly higher than the national rate, and people of color and women in the city are disproportionately more likely to be living in poverty, a report from Robin Hood finds.

Launched by Robin Hood in 2012 in partnership with Columbia University, the Poverty Tracker surveys the same twenty-three hundred New York City residents every three months on core measures of disadvantage — income poverty, material hardships, and/or health problems. According to the project's second annual report, The State of Poverty and Disadvantage in New York City (60 pages, PDF), 20 percent of adults and 20 percent of households with children were living in poverty in 2018, earning less than $17,000 and $30,000, respectively — compared with the national poverty rate of 12 percent —  while another 30 percent were living "near poverty," earning between 101 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Poverty rates were higher for Latinx (27 percent), Asian (24 percent), black (23 percent), and other/multiracial (22 percent) New Yorkers than for whites (13 percent) and also higher for women (24 percent) than for men (17 percent).

In contrast to the slightly lower poverty and material hardship rates, the percentages of New York City adults reporting health problems and mental distress increased slightly, to 23 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 2018, with the highest rates among Latinx and black New Yorkers.

"Everyday events should not come with such severe risks," the report's authors conclude, "but these risks will only be mitigated when we reduce inequality in our city and when sustainable economic mobility is the rule rather than the exception."

Read the full article about disproportionate poverty in New York at Philanthropy News Digest by Candid.