Time and Money Barriers for Families See Performing Arts Show

SUMMARY:

• People with lower incomes and less instruction (low-SES) participate at lower rates in a huge range of activities, including non just classical music concerts and plays, but also less "elitist" forms of date like going to the movies, dancing socially, and fifty-fifty attending sporting events.
• This is despite the fact that low-SES adults actually have more complimentary fourth dimension at their disposal, on average.
• Cost is a barrier for some low-SES individuals who want to participate in the arts, merely non as many as y'all might think. If we could somehow make it and so that low-SES adults were no more likely to decide not to attend an exhibit or performance because of cost than their more flush peers, information technology would hardly change the socioeconomic limerick of audiences at all.
• A major contrast to this dynamic is boob tube. Ironically, the for-turn a profit commercial TV manufacture is far more effective than our subsidized nonprofit arts organizations at engaging economically vulnerable members of our society. Non but do low-SES adults watch more than TV, low-SES adults who don't attend arts events lookout man even more Goggle box than low-SES adults who do.
• Where to become from here? We'd like to ameliorate empathise why people make the choices they do before offering recommendations. At the very to the lowest degree, though, we tin say that television should receive far more than recognition than it does for its part in shaping the cultural lives of socioeconomically disadvantaged adults.

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Less is More than – photograph past flickr user Arthur Cruz

On March 18, the Empire finale aired on Pull a fast one on. The two-hour episode was seen – on TV, in real time – by more than 17 million viewers nationwide. An estimated 50% of all African American households tuned in. In February, the New York City Ballet sold out its two,500 seat house for 3 "Art Series" performances, as is typical of this series. (Each ticket, regardless of location, was priced at $29.) Last July, bachata star Romeo Santos sold out 2 nights at Yankee Stadium, performing for more than 100,000 people. (Two thirds of the tickets price more than $100.) During the 2013-14 season, the Metropolitan Opera transmitted x operas via satellite into some 2,000 theaters in 66 countries, including more than 800 in the U.South. Box role numbers hit $threescore million worldwide. (Average ticket prices were $23.) Terminal summer, some xc,000 people put at to the lowest degree $300 and four total days (to say nothing of adaptation costs and travel time) towards attending Bonnaroo, the Tennessee rock/pop music festival. More than half of those attention came from farther afield than "the south."

With statistics like these, it'south hard not to come abroad with the impression that "the arts" – from ballet to Bonnaroo – are live and boot, well-attended and avidly consumed by every demographic imaginable. A closer look at the information, withal, surfaces bear witness that individuals of low socioeconomic condition ("depression-SES") – more often than not defined in our reading every bit those with at virtually a high school education and in the bottom one-half of the income distribution in the United States – consume the arts at a much lower charge per unit than their more affluent counterparts. The latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) in the United States shows that in 2012, probability of arts omnipresence tracked closely with level of formal teaching: higher graduates were more than than ii and a half times equally likely to nourish a so-called "benchmark" arts effect in 2012 every bit those with no more than than a high school teaching. Looking at income levels shows a like correlative relationship: those earning between $20,000 and $fifty,000, who brand up one-third of the United states of america population, made upwards just a quarter of 2012 benchmark arts audiences in 2012. Statistics from the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, Ireland, and the netherlands tell a similar story.

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, "A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002-2012."

Historically, enquiry into the demographics of arts consumption has used a rather narrow lens to define "the arts." The NEA's benchmark arts activities, which take been measured in every edition of the survey since 1982, include only alive attendance at ballet, opera, musical and nonmusical plays, classical music, jazz, museums, and galleries. However, the most recent edition of the SPPA makes clear that information technology's non only benchmark activities that are at issue. Data from the survey shows that fewer low-income individuals nourish pop and rock concerts than their wealthier counterparts, and significantly fewer of them attend visual arts festivals and craft fairs. In fact, people with lower incomes and less instruction are less likely to read books, become to the movies, take an arts class, play a musical instrument, sing, dance socially, accept or edit photographs, paint, brand scrapbooks, engage in creative writing, or brand crafts.

All told, the information paints a consistent portrait of lower participation by low-SES adults in a breathtaking range of visual, performing, literary, and film activities. While this definition of "arts" doesn't include everything (more on this later), information technology is broad enough, and the differences of sufficient magnitude, to be cause for meaning concern. If those differences reverberate disparities of access to more "mutual" arts experiences like participating regularly every bit an audience member, they correspond a pregnant challenge to Createquity'due south conception of a good for you arts ecosystem. When large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the way they might want to, we know that we're missing opportunities to amend people's lives in concrete and meaningful ways. What's really behind this phenomenon of lower participation rates among economically disadvantaged people? And what can, and should, we do about it?

THE Toll IS Likewise DAMN HIGH (OR IS Information technology?)

Before this year, the National Endowment for the Arts published "When Going Gets Tough," a study that for the showtime time offers extensive insight into the reasons why people do or do not attend arts events. Drawing from a special cultural participation module within the 2012 General Social Survey (GSS), the survey asked respondents whether they had attended an showroom or operation in the by year, and if not, why not. More one-half of respondents had indeed attended at least one showroom or performance during that time, and some other xiii% shared that they had wanted to go but decided not to for whatever reason. The report refers to this latter group as "interested non-attendees."

The most common cistron keeping people away from arts experiences, cited past nearly half of interested not-attendees, was that they "could not find the time." This makes sense: earlier ponying upward for a iii-day festival in Tennessee or a five-60 minutes opera, nosotros first have to decide if we can afford the hours.

But while lack of time is undoubtedly an obstacle for many, it does not disproportionately bear upon lower-income and working class respondents. "When Going Gets Tough" notes that "not being able to notice the time, including due to work conflicts, is increasingly mentioned…at college incomes. [Only] 31% of those in the lowest income quartile mention time constraints, compared with 53% of those in higher income quartiles." While possibly surprising, this finding is non isolated to the arts: the miracle of less perceived fourth dimension at college incomes is well documented in the literature. According to Daniel Hamermesh and Jungmin Lee's analysis of time use datasets from several countries for their cheekily-titled written report "Stressed out on Iv Continents: Fourth dimension Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?," "complaints nigh insufficient time come up disproportionately from well-off families."

Is this just a matter of perception? Do low-SES individuals experience less time-poor but because time pales in importance to other barriers they face? In fact, the preponderance of evidence suggests that low-SES people really do have more time at their disposal on average. According to a longitudinal written report of time-use data by Almudena Sevilla, Jose I. Gimenez-Nadal, and Jonathan Gershuny, discretionary time has increased for all Americans over the last 50 years, and while hours of leisure time were once fairly equal across instruction levels, low-SES people accept since enjoyed dramatic gains. By their estimation, low-SES men with at about a loftier school education accept gained an hour more than their college-educated peers during that fourth dimension; the corresponding differential for women is three.4 hours.

Bottom line: all signs point to low-SES people having relatively more free time at their disposal and lower rates of arts omnipresence than their high-SES counterparts. That would seem to offer pretty strong prove against the notion that time constraints are the primary factor keeping this demographic away from live performances and exhibits.

* * *

What almost cost? For decades, our field has offered free concerts, outreach programs, and other engagement efforts that all rest on an assumption that the cost of access is a barrier to arts consumption for depression-SES individuals. Taken literally, that supposition is supported past data from "When Going Gets Tough," which indicates that cost was a barrier for almost 40% of interested not-attendees. While the report itself does not become into detail on the extent to which cost is felt as a barrier beyond income strata, our own analysis of the underlying survey data indicates that low-SES individuals are indeed more probable to mention toll. Among interested non-attendees, 43% of people in the everyman income quartile were not able to nourish an exhibit or performance because of toll, compared to 30% of folks in the highest quartile. Viewed through the lens of didactics, the difference is even more dramatic: those who had progressed no farther than loftier school were almost twice as probable to see toll as an obstacle than respondents with a available's degree.

Source: 2012 General Social Survey. ICPSR National Archive of Data on Arts and Civilisation

Looking at the motivations of people who did attend arts events, we see a similar dynamic. Adults in the lowest quartile of household income were twice as likely as those in the highest quartile to indicate that low toll or free access was critical to their decision to nourish an event. Even at events that were free for anybody, 29% of low-SES attendees said that low (or no) cost was a major reason for their attendance, versus 17% of those in the meridian income quartile.

So the way to go anybody participating in the arts is to invest more in complimentary events and outreach programs to underserved populations, right? Not and so fast. While it is clear that price does affect the power of some low-SES adults to engage with the arts, or at least live exhibits and performances, information technology's not at all clear that removing cost every bit a barrier would make that much of a difference.

Consider this: "When Going Gets Tough" reports that there is but a half-dozen percentage-point gap between the lowest and highest income quartile for those who had gratis admission to the most recent arts exhibit they'd attended (64% in the everyman income quartile vs. 58% in the highest income quartile). While the difference in attendance at free performances is more than pronounced in the GSS information, the most contempo SPPA survey tells a unlike story: the rate of arts omnipresence at gratis music, theater, or trip the light fantastic performances actually increases equally income and educational activity levels go up. Moreover, this phenomenon has been observed in arts enquiry going back at least half a century. For their seminal early on 1960s investigation of cultural economics, Performing Arts: The Economical Dilemma, William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen surveyed more than 30,000 attendees at 160 events in the United states and UK and establish that not a single free performance was able to depict an audition that was more than than 10% "blue-collar."

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, "A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002-2012."

Admittedly, we don't know the whole story here. Perhaps affluent adults are more likely to hear about free events, or take relationships with people who tin get them free tickets. And even "free" is non necessarily free, if it still costs money to get to the location or pay for child intendance. Whatever the reasons, though, the information suggests that just offering a free option is not sufficient for arts institutions to ensure a socioeconomically representative audience. In our own analysis of the survey information from which "When Going Gets Tough" was sourced, nosotros modeled a scenario in which low-SES people were no more likely to face cost equally a barrier in attending an exhibit or operation than their loftier-SES counterparts. Roughly speaking, this simulates what would happen if every exhibit and performance in being could be attended for free. The result? Only 7% of the chasm in omnipresence rates between rich and poor, and between college-educated and not, would be bridged.

Source: 2012 General Social Survey via ICPSR National Archive of Information on Arts and Culture, author analysis

"When Going Gets Tough" does detect one other barrier to admission that's correlated with income: ease of getting to the venue. According to the study, "44 percentage of adults in the lowest income quartile said the exhibit or performance was too difficult to go to….In contrast, simply 24 percent of those in the highest income quartile mentioned this issue." Yet, like cost, this factor on its own is not enough to explain the disparity. Indeed, according to our model, even if all barriers to participation were removed for depression-SES populations and every person who wanted to attend an exhibit or performance in the by year were able to do so, it would yet not close even half of the gap in attendance rates.

Source: 2012 General Social Survey via ICPSR National Archive of Information on Arts and Culture, author analysis

Clearly, there is something else going on. If none of these barriers fully explain the low participation rates among the socioeconomically disadvantaged, what else is keeping them away?

ARTS VS. THE TUBE (MIND THE GAP)

Createquity's definition of a healthy arts ecosystem imagines a earth in which "each human today and in the future has an opportunity to participate in the arts at a level advisable to his/her involvement and skill" (emphasis added). Our concern virtually disparities of access to the arts stems from the potential for life circumstances to interfere with such choices. The revelations in this research, all the same, advise that there is a significant proportion of economically disadvantaged people who practise not accept the initiative to experience the arts, fifty-fifty when time and toll are not issues.

Source: National Endowment for the Arts, "When Going Gets Tough"

Our analysis of the GSS data underlying "When Going Gets Tough" shows that a lack of explicit interest is far and away the dominant cistron keeping low-SES populations away from arts events. Just nether a third of the overall sample neither attended an exhibit or performance in the past year nor could retrieve one they wanted to attend but couldn't. Among the bottom income quartile, all the same, this number was nearly one-half – and for people who hadn't finished loftier schoolhouse, it was over 65%!

Among the litany of arts-related activities for which participation correlates with increased income and college instruction, ane notable exception looms large. Aside from eating, television is almost as close to a universal American pastime equally exists today. A whopping 93% of us spend time in front of the tube on a typical day, co-ordinate to the GSS, and nearly 97% of American households ain a Tv set. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics's American Fourth dimension Use Survey (ATUS), watching Idiot box was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.8 hours per day) in 2013, bookkeeping for more than half of leisure fourth dimension for those historic period xv and over. John P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey in "Busyness every bit Usual" prove that television consumption has increased dramatically in recent decades across all populations, noting that TV has eaten upwardly six of the eight hours of the discretionary hours we've gained on average since 1965.

While almost everyone watches television, it turns out that low-SES people watch more than most. A closer look at the Time Use Survey numbers shows that individuals with less than a high school diploma spent 3.77 hours per weekday watching TV in 2013, almost double the Tv hours consumed by those with a available'southward degree and higher. What's more than, these less-educated individuals spent twice as much time consuming tv set as on all other leisure activities combined–including reading, socializing and communicating, sports and exercise, relaxing, and playing computer games.

A similar dynamic tin be observed in the spending patterns captured in the BLS'south Consumer Expenditure Survey. Although individuals in the meridian income quintile spend only a picayune flake more of their budgets on "entertainment" on the whole than those on the lesser (5% vs. 4%), the distribution within this amount is quite unlike. In the lowest income quintile, more than than one-half of spending goes to "sound and visual equipment and services" (which presumably includes TVs), while just over a tenth goes to "fees and admissions." The acme bracket, by contrast, spends more than on fees and admissions than on A/Five equipment and services.

It seems likely that quite a few low-SES adults are substantially substituting telly for other forms of engagement with the arts and entertainment. Our analysis of GSS information offers strong show to support this hypothesis. It turns out that even inside depression-SES groups, a lack of expressed involvement in attention an exhibit or performance over the past year correlates with more than hours spent watching Telly. Whatever sustenance people are seeking from alive arts attendance, information technology seems the folks who don't get are getting it (at least in office) from the small screen.

Source: 2012 General Social Survey. ICPSR National Annal of Data on Arts and Culture

Is that something to be worried nigh? At least one group of researchers argues that it is. In their previously-mentioned written report on leisure inequality, Sevilla et al. find that in contrast to previously mentioned increases in the quantity of leisure time, the quality of leisure time has declined beyond the board for people at all income levels, with an particularly steep decline in leisure quality for low-SES individuals. In other words, even though low-SES individuals accept experienced the greatest increment in number of discretionary hours since 1965, they have also experienced the greatest decline in the "quality" of how those hours are spent, as measured past their relative levels of different types of leisure. Sevilla et al. run into increased Idiot box watching equally a prime number culprit behind this decrease in leisure time quality, equally watching Television set is a passive, one-manner communication medium that doesn't require the presence of others.

On the other hand, TV is relatively cheap for the quantity of programming available and tin can be delivered on demand via devices we likely already ain. And in the midst of what many are calling a new aureate age of idiot box, claims on the part of egghead researchers most "depression-quality" leisure fourth dimension might band hollow to the folks who tune in every day.

(Maybe) THEY'RE Only Non THAT INTO Y'all

The truth is that we don't know much most why low-SES people brand the choices they do about how to spend their free time. Are they watching television because they truly bask it and happen to discover it more fulfilling than going out to a concert, a museum, or a movie theatre? Or are they doing so as a reluctant concession to circumstance, with TV being the just fine art grade they tin afford to consume (or the only one they don't accept to schedule in advance)? Or possibly something in between – a "learned" and socially reinforced preference that has every bit much to practise with identity equally anything specific to the experience itself?

"When Going Gets Tough" offers some support for the final of these propositions. Survey respondents who self-identified as heart or upper class were much more than likely to nourish an exhibit or performance than those who identified every bit working class. This finding held even after controlling for income and education:

For example, among individuals whose household income was around the national median, approximately 60% identified equally working class and 36% as centre class. Despite having very similar household incomes, merely 48% of those identifying every bit working course attended at to the lowest degree one exhibit or performance, compared with 67% who identified as eye class.

Perhaps some low-SES individuals don't attend arts events simply because they don't call up of themselves equally the "kind of people" who nourish arts events. Which brings u.s. back to the question: is that a problem?

Fine art Gallery – photograph by flickr user LWYang

We would urge would-exist social engineers to tread advisedly when it comes to deciding for poor people what their consumption preferences should be. (An instructive example here is the movement in New York Metropolis and elsewhere to reduce soda consumption, which has faced pushback from the very depression-income communities it'southward intended to help.) How far can one go to increment participation by underrepresented audiences before those efforts stop existence perceived as generous and starting time coming off as patronizing? Until we know more than near low-SES people'southward subjective experience of their gratuitous time — whether they would spend their time differently if they had the opportunity, and whether there's a place for the arts in those dreams — nosotros suggest against making too many assumptions.

At that place is a rich irony lurking only beneath the surface here: tv set, a largely for-profit commercial industry, routinely does a much better chore engaging the most economically vulnerable members of our population than our supposedly charitable nonprofit arts institutions that receive tens of billions of dollars annually in government-sanctioned subsidy. Equally Television receiver becomes increasingly untethered from circulate networks and large cablevision channels and increasingly experienced on laptops and handheld devices, the nonprofit arts sector would exercise well to let go of its historical marginalization of the small screen. For amend or worse, television is a powerful cultural force, and ignoring it is no longer tenable in an era of increased attention to cultural disinterestedness and customs relevance.

Dorsum TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

In the meantime, however, let'southward not forget that we take identified one constituency that is clearly suffering under the status quo. More 45% of low-SES adults who were interested in participating in an exhibit or functioning over a 12-month period did not exercise so because of cost – a effigy that is more than 10 per centum points higher than their high-SES counterparts. Co-ordinate to our analysis of the GSS data, roughly ane-ane.five meg people in the U.s. over the historic period of 18 autumn into this gap. Not simply does cost of attendance affair more than for low-SES individuals and families with less discretionary income, with income inequality in the United States exploding, the number of people who face economic barriers to their desired level of participation in the arts is likely to multiply if current trends continue. And think that these numbers apply only to exhibits and performances, merely there are lower rates of participation by low-income and less-educated adults in numerous other activities likewise, including going to the movies and many types of art-making and arts learning. The SPPA even reports that the same didactics and income correlations we've been talking about utilize when information technology comes to attending a sporting result, playing sports, and physical exercise. It'south likely that cost limits the ability of low-income and less-educated individuals to participate in all of these to some extent.

While it's not surprising to see lower participation by socioeconomically disadvantaged adults in arts activities that they perceive as too expensive, information technology'south important to keep that gap in perspective. Our investigation has uncovered testify that although this problem is real, it directly impacts the choices of a much smaller number of people than we might have guessed. As nosotros proceed our core enquiry process at Createquity, we'll be looking to understand better why poor people and those who have non attended college seem much less likely to even be interested in participating in the arts, every bit well equally weigh this particular disparity of access alongside others that we accept yet to examine closely or even identify. We look forward to sharing what nosotros find.

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Source: http://createquity.com/2015/05/why-dont-they-come/

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