Ong on Reforms to Uphold Census Integrity

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UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong spoke to the Associated Press about ways to address flaws in how the U.S. Census is conducted. The Census Bureau found that Black, Hispanic, American Indian and other minority residents were undercounted at greater rates in 2020 than in the previous decade, prompting discussion about ways to better measure changes in the U.S. population. In 2020, the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to use administrative records to determine the number of people in the country illegally in order to influence the allocation of congressional seats. Ong noted that any effort to revamp how the count is conducted will need to be protected from similar efforts to misuse the count for political purposes. “The 2020 enumeration was a wakeup call,” Ong said. “The Census Bureau has a very important and fundamental function in our society. It is the keeper of our demographic truths.”

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Ong Highlights Disproportionate Suffering of Asian American Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was featured in an NBC News article about challenges facing Asian American communities during the pandemic. One study co-authored by Ong found that Asian-owned businesses were hit the hardest during the pandemic due to halts in customer-facing operations as well as increased racism. To better support lower-income and underrepresented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the White House announced an initiative to disaggregate data under the “Asian” umbrella and expand language options for federal programs. Ong noted that some Asian American entrepreneurs are immigrants with a rudimentary command of English that is not sufficient to navigate federal program applications, especially when the information is provided only in English. He said some older business owners were not aware programs like the Paycheck Protection Program existed and could not quickly move their services online. “There seems to be a double whammy,” Ong said.

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Wells Fargo Provides $500,000 for LPPI, CNK Research The grant to UCLA research groups will support policy solutions to benefit small business owners of color

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A new grant of $500,000 from Wells Fargo will support efforts by researchers affiliated with the Luskin School to determine best practices and policy solutions to benefit businesses operated by persons of color.

The award will go to the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (UCLA LPPI) and the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) for research aimed at increasing access to capital, technology and environmentally sustainable practices for these businesses.

“COVID-19’s disparate impact on small business owners of color highlighted the enduring legacy of structural barriers that impede economic opportunity and social mobility for large swaths of working Americans,” said Maria Samaniego, deputy director of UCLA LPPI. “This grant will allow us to develop policy research and resources that are specifically tailored to the needs of communities of color, which have the power to transform small business ownership in ways that will drive our economy for generations.”

UCLA LPPI and CNK will focus on understanding how to broaden access to financial services and technology tools. They will also explore how to best leverage public, private and social partnerships to boost the entrepreneurship potential of small businesses owned by Latinos and other people of color. The findings will lead to more informed decisions about post-COVID economic recovery policy relating to minority-owned businesses. Another goal will be increasing labor force participation in those communities.

“We cannot ignore the bright spotlight the pandemic has put on inequity, nor the responsibility and opportunity we have to close gaps in resources that have existed for far too long,” said Jenny Flores, head of small business growth philanthropy at Wells Fargo. “Investing in UCLA LPPI and CNK will offer an in-depth view into how the public and private sectors can better support and accelerate access for business owners of color who will be at the forefront of building an inclusive economy.”

Research Professor Paul Ong, director of CNK, pointed to previous research from UCLA that has identified economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and produced insight into how society’s systems and institutions often work against the interests of people in disadvantaged communities. “With this funding, we will be able to pinpoint the exact systemic barriers and to generate the knowledge to remove them for future generations,” he said. “Equally important, new insights will inform new practices that create greater equity for people of color.”

Support from Wells Fargo will also enable UCLA LPPI and CNK to identify best practices in sustainability that small businesses can adopt to help them meet the challenges presented by climate change.

Report Highlights ‘Atmosphere of Fear’ for Asian American Employees

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A KQED article featured new research from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge on the rising incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes. The center collaborated with the California-based coalition Stop AAPI Hate to produce a report based on the findings of a national survey of Asian American and Pacific Islander employees. Those surveyed reported alarmingly high rates of hate incidents at their jobs, in addition to an overwhelming fear of being targeted at work. More than a quarter of the respondents said they experienced a hate incident at work in 2021, and more than 20% said they are reluctant to return to in-person work because they’re afraid they will be racially targeted. “It creates an atmosphere of fear when you go to work and you’re uncertain about what’s going to happen that day because you happen to be Asian American,” said Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and a co-author of the report.

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Ong on Consequences of Census Undercount

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Associated Press about widespread concerns about gaps in the 2020 U.S. Census data. The U.S. Census is one of the most important surveys about how Americans live, typically receiving information from 3.5 million households about family life, education, income and employment, but the pandemic resulted in fewer responses being recorded. According to Ong, there are two potential problems with the undercount. “The first is not having comparable data to track longitudinal changes over time,” he said. “The second is a far bigger issue — that is, not having the data to examine the pandemic effects.” Many researchers are concerned that there will be a significant gap in data for a momentous year including the pandemic, natural disasters and social justice protests. “For us, it is important to examine which populations and neighborhoods were most hurt,” Ong said.

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Disadvantages Magnified by Pandemic, Ong Says

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UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong was featured in a USA Today article about the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black families. Black people are more than twice as likely to rent as white people, eliminating the safety net that comes with owning a home. Furthermore, Black renters are more likely to be low-income and cost burdened, the article noted. The pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities due to racial discrimination and historic inequities in education, employment and housing. “The pre-pandemic disadvantages that were there already – paying a higher share of one’s income to afford housing, having a much more precarious economic standing, not having the same financial fallback with huge differences in wealth and assets – those disadvantages during the pandemic got magnified,” Ong explained. “During the pandemic, our research and other people’s research clearly shows that African Americans were displaced at a much higher rate.”

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A Closer Look at Pandemic’s Impact on Asian American Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to NBC News about the findings of a recent survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian-owned businesses. The survey of 400 Asian-owned businesses in Southern California found that a disproportionate number were forced to close their doors and fire staff during the pandemic. Ong explained that Asian-owned businesses tend to be in sectors that were the most impacted — such as food service, hospitality and retail — and that many of them didn’t have the money to keep their businesses open when profits took a nosedive. “The racism throughout the pandemic also led people to avoid businesses in Asian neighborhoods altogether,” Ong added. Many small businesses were unable to benefit from federal assistance programs due to language barriers and lack of outreach in Asian communities about the existence of such programs and their application processes.

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Gilens, Ong on Forces Undermining a Just Economic Recovery

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UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens and Paul Ong shared insights on economic and political inequality and opportunity as part of a panel organized by the UCLA Anderson Forecast, a quarterly report that frames the economic outlook for California and the nation. Released Sept. 29, the latest report identified a shift from earlier forecasts, which had raised hopes for a blockbuster recovery as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. Heading into the final quarter of 2021, these hopes have been tempered by the spread of the Delta variant and stagnating vaccination rates, which in turn have led to consumer caution. A panel of experts hosted by the Anderson Forecast brought context to these findings, with a focus on how income is distributed unevenly across the United States. Gilens, chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, said political and economic inequality are intertwined, resulting in policies that cater to moneyed interests. “Taming the role of money in American politics won’t be easy, especially with an unsympathetic Supreme Court, and … won’t by itself fix everything that ails our democracy,” Gilens said. “But it’s hard to see how we can fix American democracy without reducing the dominance of money in our politics.” Ong, director of UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, focused on race and ethnicity as factors in the job, food, housing and educational insecurity that persists across generations. “I would encourage my colleagues to think much more explicitly about the fundamentals of why race and racism exist within an economy,” he said. “Simply saying that everybody should have equal opportunity doesn’t make it so.” 

View the Anderson Forecast presentation, including a keynote address by Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

 

Ong on COVID-19’s Impact on Asian Businesses

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UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong spoke to KPCC and LAist about findings from a survey of members of the Asian Business Association of Los Angeles. More than 400 association members described how their businesses were faring, confirming Ong’s fears that Asian-owned businesses have disproportionately suffered during the pandemic, a trend that has been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian incidents. More than half of the survey respondents said they had to close at some point during the pandemic, and nearly a third said their operating capacity had dropped by more than 50%. “I actually believe this is a conservative estimate,” said Ong, pointing out that the negative impact might be even worse than the English-only survey was able to capture. “So many of the hardest-hit businesses are run by immigrants who don’t speak English as their first language,” he said. Ong recommended that policymakers prioritize targeted outreach offered in many languages to support Asian-owned businesses.

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Ong on Repercussions of Census Undercount

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Director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Paul Ong was featured in the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Long Beach Post discussing the results of the 2020 Census and its impact on communities of color. Accurate census counts are crucial for the distribution of federal aid and congressional representation, but Ong’s analysis of the census data suggests that Hispanic and Black populations may have been undercounted more than other groups. “There is strong evidence that undercounts in the 2020 census are worse than in past decades,” he said. Ong noted that renters, undocumented immigrants and low-income households were also undercounted, partially due to the disruption caused by the pandemic and the Trump administration’s attempt to include a citizenship question. “The big-picture implication is it will skew the redistricting process, our undercounted neighborhoods will be underrepresented, and populations that are undercounted will be shortchanged when it comes to the allocation of federal spending,” Ong concluded.

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