Black residents of Greater Pittsburgh face more severe poverty than any other racial group in the area, according to a study released yesterday by the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems.

	Read the study The full text of "Pittsburgh's Racial Demographics: Differences and Disparities" is available on the Center on Racial and Social Problems Web site.
	The Invisible Men blog asks, "What can the black community do to make a difference?"

"Pittsburgh's Racial Demographics: Differences and Disparities" is the center's inaugural survey on race in the area.

The report looked at the lives of whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians in the city, Allegheny County and the metropolitan area, one of the most comprehensive surveys ever on the quality of life of multiple racial groups.

It explored six areas, including family life, economics, intergroup relations and mental health. While problems afflicting the poor have been known for decades, the new data showed that in almost all areas, blacks in Pittsburgh severely lag behind their white counterparts and in some cases -- such as professional employment and family life -- are at the bottom among the racial groups.

In many cases, the study found that the quality of life of blacks in Pittsburgh is below national averages.

"This report is so damaging, it can't be ignored," said M. Gayle Moss, president of the Pittsburgh NAACP.

"The Allegheny Conference, the Chamber of Commerce and all the folks who make decisions here can no longer walk around like it's not happening."

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said the report "underscores a theme I've been acting on since I became mayor -- conditions in Pittsburgh have to change. We need to continue to be proactive and innovative in our approaches to areas like workforce development, education and public safety. Things won't change overnight, but we are setting policies today that will impact generations to come. And we are rising up and doing it together."

The county is aware of many of the issues and is concerned about them, said Kevin Evanto, spokesman for county Chief Executive Dan Onorato.

The county supports affordable housing in the Mon Valley and has recently worked with a state legislator to create a million-dollar minority business development fund. In addition to announcing an expanded summer youth jobs program, Mr. Evanto said, the county works with faith-based groups and seeks other partners to address the issues outlined in the Pitt survey.

According to the study, blacks here live largely in segregated communities where they are disadvantaged by poor transportation and waning public safety and where 75 percent of the households are headed by black females.

The median black household income was $20,000 -- $10,000 less than the average income for white households..

In education, black students in public schools are not as proficient as their white counterparts, based on state test results in grades five, eight and 11. The number of black girls graduating has increased, but not the number of black boys.

Helen Faison, director of the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute at Chatham University, declined to comment on the report because she hadn't seen it, but did say the racial achievement gap "isn't unique to Pittsburgh, but that doesn't give us much comfort."

"There's no question that it persists and that despite the best efforts to date, we haven't been able to do as much as we had hoped to erase it," she said.

The educational disparities are troubling, said Ralph Bangs, a director at the Center on Race and Social Problems and a co-author of the study.

Low levels of achievement lead to greatly reduced life opportunities and social disorganization that stems from a neighborhood of less-educated youth and adults, which drives more youths to the streets, he said.

Larger cities, like Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington have higher rates of crime and poverty among black residents. But they differ from Pittsburgh in that they also have significantly larger, more politically active black middle-class communities, which can push policy changes that benefit blacks in employment and education, and a beefier core of black business owners who provide an economic backbone.

That dynamic is missing from Pittsburgh, said John Wallace, a Pitt professor and one of the authors of the report.

While waiting for policy change, Dr. Wallace said black residents need to "use their existing resources to educate their kids, support one another and could demand and expect more" from government.

Economically, black males have unemployment rates that are two to three times higher than their white counterparts and when they are working, nearly 60 percent are employed in low-paying service or sales positions.

Nearly one-half of the black households in Pittsburgh don't have a car or the ability to purchase one, said Dr. Bangs. While there is a greater need for public transportation, many black neighborhoods are poorly served by it.

The report found that blacks here are three times more likely to be poor, greatly impacting their diet, health care, housing and child care.

Those conditions, the study found, lead most African-Americans in the city to see race relations as a serious problem and to believe they are treated less fairly at work and on public transportation and are mistreated by police.

The study found evidence of poor housing and poor diets, and said that those conditions manifest themselves in higher mental illness rates, as well.

In the county, blacks have higher rates of serious mental illness than whites and the more impoverished they are, the more likely they are to suffer from serious mental illness.

In a survey of crime, blacks in Allegheny County had significantly higher rates of arrests among juveniles and adults, including those for violent offenses like murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

In 2004, in the city of Pittsburgh, there were 2,700 drug arrests for blacks 18 and over, while there were 609 arrests for whites.

The same year in the city, there were 37 black murder victims 18 and older, and 11 white murder victims.

The impact of poverty, unemployment and criminal involvement, said Dr. Wallace, breeds stereotypes and dooms neighborhoods to long-term deterioration and even negatively impacts the views of people who live there.

"The problems reported are not new, but there hasn't been enough progress," said Dr. Bangs. To fight some of individual and systemic racism, "we need better policies and a better political will to change things. We need to do more than we're doing."