TheLoop21.com

By: Alyssa Giachino (Add to your loop)
Wed, 01/27/2010 - 10:19

Retrained former autoworkers at a job fair in Detroit.

The dream of moving away from the troubled inner city to the tranquility of suburban comfort was punctured over the last decade. The single family home and accompanying white picket fence turned out not to be a remedy for being poor, and suburban poverty grew faster than urban poverty between 2000 and 2008, according to a new study by the Brookings Institute.

Actually, over the decade poor people were in good company, with their ranks filling out by 15.4 percent, twice the growth rate of the entire population. There were 5.2 million more people in 2008 than in 2000, for a total of 39.1 million Americans living in poverty in 2008. The Institute predicts the data will worsen in this recession.

The Institute looked at the 95 largest metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2008 and found that suburbs saw their poor population grow by 25 percent, nearly 5 times faster than within city limits. By 2008, 1.5 million more poor people were suburbanites compared to city dwellers.

The study only looked at poverty rates, and didn’t examine how race played into this growth. But by looking at race demographics in the cities with the greatest growth in poverty, it’s clear that Blacks have been in the bulls eye of these trends.

The Midwest was hit the hardest by poverty growth, with the deterioration of the once-strong manufacturing industry, many of those families who had sustained themselves on building cars for generations have been unable to get a foothold in other industries. In the Rust Belt, the increase in poverty was true in both the cities and suburbs.

The chart below lays out how the rate of poverty has shifted into the suburbs from 2000 to 2008.

I pulled the info for this chart from the Brookings study, and added the last column with the Black population census data. This is an imperfect comparison, because the Black population is measured in the city limits, and in many of these metropolitan areas, the suburbs tend to be a lot whiter than the city. However, as a measure of how increasing poverty rates have impacted Black neighborhoods, I think it’s useful.


Share of Metropolitan Poor Living in the Suburbs

The Institute's researchers say the decade's growth in suburban poverty, combined with the fallout from this recession means the cities have to make adjustments in how they organize safety net services, like food stamps, to reach the population in need.

Alyssa Giachino is an economics writer for TheLoop21.com. She has worked as a reporter in New York, New Jersey, Mexico City and California covering stories on labor, the environment, immigration and politics.

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