Conference's findings on middle class don't apply to Chapel Hill
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By: Ryan McPeek, Staff Writer
Issue date: 11/6/07 Section: University
The UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity finished a two-day conference Monday about the erosion of the middle class.
The conference featured an opening speech Sunday by Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect, a self-proclaimed liberal bi-weekly magazine that covers politics and culture.
In the keynote address, Kuttner criticized the policies of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as harmful to the middle class. Kuttner also singled out government deregulation, pushed by financial elites, as the cause of the sub-prime lending crisis that is affecting the entire American economy.
"Regulation has become a dirty word even though you pick up your daily paper and see about E. coli in food and toys from China," Kuttner said.
But in many ways the host town for the conference does not reflect the fears of its attendees. Chapel Hill is becoming increasingly set off from the American norm.
In the 2000 U.S. Census, the median family income in Orange County was about $10,000 more than the U.S. median. In 2006 that disparity grew to $13,000 - or about 22 percent.
During those same years, the percent of residents living in poverty increased in the U.S. but decreased in Orange County.
The percentage of Orange County residents below the poverty level declined by 0.2 percent, while the percentage of Americans below the poverty level rose by about 1 percent.
College towns in general have escaped the crunch of the sub-prime lending crisis. The New York Times recently reported that of the 10 cities with the lowest proportion of sub-prime mortgages, nine are college towns.
"The University tends to make things very stable for us here," said Chris Culbreth, a broker at Tony Hall & Associates, a local real estate firm.
The proportion of sub-prime mortgages in Chapel Hill is likely among the lowest, along with the other college towns.
Andy Law, vice president of business development at Corporate Investors Mortgage Group in Chapel Hill, estimates the proportion of sub-prime mortgages in Chapel Hill to be less than 2 percent - a far cry from the U.S. average of 29 percent.
The conference featured an opening speech Sunday by Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect, a self-proclaimed liberal bi-weekly magazine that covers politics and culture.
In the keynote address, Kuttner criticized the policies of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as harmful to the middle class. Kuttner also singled out government deregulation, pushed by financial elites, as the cause of the sub-prime lending crisis that is affecting the entire American economy.
"Regulation has become a dirty word even though you pick up your daily paper and see about E. coli in food and toys from China," Kuttner said.
But in many ways the host town for the conference does not reflect the fears of its attendees. Chapel Hill is becoming increasingly set off from the American norm.
In the 2000 U.S. Census, the median family income in Orange County was about $10,000 more than the U.S. median. In 2006 that disparity grew to $13,000 - or about 22 percent.
During those same years, the percent of residents living in poverty increased in the U.S. but decreased in Orange County.
The percentage of Orange County residents below the poverty level declined by 0.2 percent, while the percentage of Americans below the poverty level rose by about 1 percent.
College towns in general have escaped the crunch of the sub-prime lending crisis. The New York Times recently reported that of the 10 cities with the lowest proportion of sub-prime mortgages, nine are college towns.
"The University tends to make things very stable for us here," said Chris Culbreth, a broker at Tony Hall & Associates, a local real estate firm.
The proportion of sub-prime mortgages in Chapel Hill is likely among the lowest, along with the other college towns.
Andy Law, vice president of business development at Corporate Investors Mortgage Group in Chapel Hill, estimates the proportion of sub-prime mortgages in Chapel Hill to be less than 2 percent - a far cry from the U.S. average of 29 percent.
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