Last week’s roundups of Brooklyn census data skipped over a couple of things, which the NY Daily News has picked up. Our high school and college graduation rates have swung up since that last count, eight years ago, as did the wealth of the average Brooklynite and the number of us who are employed. “The number of 25-year-olds holding at least a high school diploma soared 17%, to 1.2 million, while those with at least a bachelor’s degree rose by 30%, to 438,568 people,” they write. Brooklyn public high schools’ four-year graduation rate rose to 59.8% in 2007, from 46.6% in 2000. The median income rose 27%, to $40,942. The numbers “proved what many had already known: Brooklyn was experiencing a renaissance.” The evidence, sited by one college professor: organic juice joints replacing bodegas, a sign of “rapid gentrification.” But the higher test scores might have more to do with an influx “higher-educated adults” from the Caribbean and Asia; the latter population increased by 21%. The neighborhoods where fortunes rose most dramatically? Cobble Hill, Park Slope and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Youth Movement Fires Brooklyn Boro Gentrification [NY Daily News]
Photo by mccfamtracker.