Local and National Statistics
“Nearly 12,000 people in the Washington metropolitan area are homeless.”
-Fannie Mae Foundation
“More than 40 percent are in families; about a third are children.”
-Fannie Mae Foundation
“Less than 13 percent of the homeless people in our region regularly live on the streets.”
-Fannie Mae Foundation
“A worker earning minimum wage no longer has sufficient income to afford a safe and decent apartment.”
-Fannie Mae Foundation
“Every day in Montgomery County there are more than 1,500 people who are homeless.”
-Montgomery County Coalition for the homeless
“The average age of a homeless person in the United States is 9 years old.”
-Montgomery County Coalition for the homeless
“One-half of homeless children attend 3 different schools in one year.”
-Homes for the Homeless
“75% of homeless children perform below grade level in reading.”
-Homes for the Homeless
“About 600,000 families and 1.35 million children experience homelessness in the United States.”
-National Alliance to End Homelessness
“Youth homelessness is disturbingly common. Although the prevalence of youth homelessness is difficult to measure, researchers estimate that about 5 to 7.7 percent of youth experience homelessness.”
-National Alliance to End Homelessness
“With at least one million youth on the streets and in shelter—and thousands more leaving juvenile justice, mental health facilities, and leaving foster care systems—the problem of youth homelessness continues to grow.”
-National Alliance to End Homelessness
“Tremendous racial gaps exist over who graduates and who doesn't. Students from historically disadvantaged minority groups—American Indian, Hispanic, and Black—have little more than a fifty-fifty chance of finishing high school with a diploma.”
-The Urban Institute
“The rates for students who attend school in high poverty, racially segregated, and urban school districts lag from 15 to 18 percent behind their peers.”
-The Urban Institute
A college master's degree is worth $1.3 million more in lifetime earnings than a high school diploma, according to a recent report from the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.
Over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million.
Persons with doctoral degrees earn an average of $3.4 million during their working life, while those with professional degrees do best at $4.4 million.
"At most ages, more education equates with higher earnings, and the payoff is most notable at the highest educational levels," said Jennifer Cheeseman Day, co-author of the report.
The average annual earnings ranged from $18,900 for high school dropouts to $25,900 for high school graduates, $45,400 for college graduates and $99,300 for the holders of professional degrees (medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians and lawyers).
Over a work life, earnings for a worker with a bachelor's degree compared with one who had just a high school diploma increase by about $1 million for non-Hispanic Whites and about $700,000 for African Americans; Asians and Pacific Islanders; and Hispanics.
Currently, almost 9-in-10 young adults graduate from high school and about 6-in-10 high school seniors go on to college the following year.
- The report titled "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings"
