"It Takes a Pillage" - Density of Non-Profits Has No Bearing on Quality of Life in Pasadena

Pasadena Sub Rosa ^ | December 18, 2009 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

DENSITY OF NON-PROFITS, CITY SPENDING HAS NO BEARING ON QUALITY OF LIFE IN PASADENA

Exploratory Quality of Life Index Study 2008 – Pasadena Sub Rosa Website

Last month CNN/Money Magazine released a perfunctory rating of the Top 10 Cities in San Gabriel Valley, which indicated that the City of Walnut had the highest quality of life. Pasadena was ranked 18th out of 25 cities in San Gabriel Valley. But the City of Walnut is a bedroom community with a population of about 30,000 mostly upper middle class residents.

To correct the deficiencies of CNN/Money Magazines flawed apples-to-oranges comparison study, this writer conducted a rough quality of life survey of cities with populations over 100,000 in San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys with diverse populations based on different criteria (Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, El Monte, and West Covina). The results of this exploratory study are summarized in the data table below.

What pops out in this over-simplified survey is that the amount of City spending (reflected by how much each city spends per household from its General Fund for police, fire, parks and recreation) is unrelated to the quality of life measures of poverty rates, crime rates, unemployment rates, school drop out and graduation rates, academic performance index scores, and affordable housing. Perhaps more surprisingly, the amount of social capital in each city measured by the number of non-profit agencies and churches seemingly has no relationship to the quality of life in each city.

Pasadena has by far the highest number and density of non-profit agencies and the highest General Fund spending on public safety, libraries and parks and recreation, but ranked 4th out of the 5 cities surveyed. In fact, it has nearly double the amount of General Fund spending per household and double the number of non-profit agencies as Glendale which ranked first, as well as having the second highest median income level per household, but ranks far down the quality of life scale.

The number of non-profit agencies and quality of life ranking are as follows:

(1) Glendale - 487 nonprofits

(2) Burbank - 290 nonprofits

(3) W. Covina - 126 nonprofits

(4) Pasadena - 998 nonprofits

(5) El Monte - 78 nonprofits

Surprisingly, the City of West Covina has a somewhat higher quality of life rank than Pasadena even though it spends less than half of Pasadena on fire, police, libraries and parks and recreation and has only a small fraction of the non-profit agencies as Pasadena. However, West Covina shockingly has a higher median income ($64,336) per household than Pasadena ($61,269) according to the U.S. Census Bureau 2006 Community Survey.

The results of the study are summarized below:

To view table go to http://www.pasadenasubrosa.typepad.com/

(data not downloadable)

The inter-relationship of the above data is associational and has not been statistically verified with any confidence level or error rate (i.e., multiple regression statistics). Moreover, data on many critical measures of quality of life, such as divorce rates, were unable to be found. Measures such as access to cultural and artistic amenities, proximity to the Rose Bowl, and other measures were not included as Pasadena is possibly unique in this regard.

Although the above survey findings are tentative it indicates that with respect to the density of non-profits and quality of life in Pasadena, "it takes a pillage."

[ChessExpert]

Liberals often measure output by dollars spent, not by results obtained. This confusion between input and output is one reason why their policies fail so often.

[Kevmo]

interesting at first glance... bmflr