NEW ORLEANS — A by-the-numbers look at the lasting impact of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. The metro area includes New Orleans and seven surrounding parishes.
• Toll: Katrina caused more than 1,800 deaths and $151 billion in damage across the Gulf Coast region.
• Population: New Orleans’ estimated population last year was 384,320 compared to 494,294 before the storm. Last year the city climbed back into the nation’s 50 most populous cities for the first time since Katrina. The city was 67 percent black and 26 percent white before the storm; Now it’s about 60 percent black and 31 percent white. Hispanics have grown from 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent now.
• Economy: The metro area has five percent more jobs than in 2008, and venture capital doubled in the last four years to $32 per capita in 2014. Metro area businesses are starting at a rate 64 percent higher than the rest of the country - 471 startups per 100,000 adults during 2011-2013. Tourism is rebounding, with 39,000 hotel rooms, a few hundred more than the city had in 2004. Hotel revenue rose from nearly $1 billion in 2004 to $1.37 billion in 2014.
• Quality of Life: Revenue to arts and culture nonprofits surged from $213 per capita before the storm to $428 per capita in 2014 - far ahead of the U.S. average of $103 per capita. The amount of bike lanes and bike paths has increased from 11 miles in 2004 to 92 miles in 2014.
• Inequality: 77 percent of white men in the metro area are employed, compared to 57 percent of black men. Only 12 percent of black men in the metro area have bachelor’s degrees, compared with 35 percent of white men. Since 1999, the share of the city’s white households considered middle and upper class has climbed while black households in this group have shrunk. Child poverty is 39 percent, a rate virtually unchanged since before the storm, while rents have risen about 40 percent since 2000.
• Crime: The jail population has dropped almost in half since 2004, but remains three times the national rate. Murders dropped last year to one of the lowest rates in decades, but are up 29 percent since then.
Sources: The Data Center, the city of New Orleans, the New Orleans Police Department, the U.S. Census Bureau, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and Associated Press archives.
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