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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Day: May 20, 2013

Suburban Poverty

  • Poverty hits home in local suburbs like S. King County, By Lornet Turnbull, May 19, 2013, Seattle Times: “The idea of suburban America conjures up images of Ward and June Cleaver, of safe streets and good schools, prosperity and homogeny. But new findings released Monday by the Brookings Institution are flipping such conventional thinking about American suburbs on its head: In the past decade and for the first time, the majority of poor people were living not in big cities but in suburbs. Nowhere is suburbanization of poverty more evident than in South King County, where affordable housing has drawn immigrants and refugees coming here from across the globe as well as low-income families forced from Seattle by skyrocketing housing costs…”
  • Suburbs’ share of poor has grown since 2000, by Sam Roberts, May 20, 2013, New York Times: “The suburbs, which in 2000 accounted for 29 percent of the region’s poor people, a decade later were home to 33 percent of metropolitan New Yorkers living below the federal poverty level, according to an analysis of the latest census results…”
  • Advocates struggle to reach growing ranks of suburban poor, By Pam Fessler, May 20, 2013, National Public Radio: “Poverty has grown everywhere in the U.S. in recent years, but mostly in the suburbs. During the 2000s, it grew twice as fast in suburban areas as in cities, with more than 16 million poor people now living in the nation’s suburbs — more than in urban or rural areas. Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, says this shift in poverty can be seen in Montgomery County, Md., right outside the nation’s capital…”
  • Study confirms poverty hits the suburbs, too, By Alfred Lubrano, May 20, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Say poverty in the Philadelphia area, and it conjures images of North Philadelphia or Kensington, not the suburbs. But the suburbs on both sides of the Delaware River are becoming steadily poorer, part of a national trend that confounds long-held beliefs that life is always better in greener pastures beyond urban limits…”
  • U.S. suburban poverty growing, but trend mixed in Miami-Dade, Broward, By Andres Viglucci, May 20 2013, Miami Herald: “Across the country, the poverty rate is surging in the suburbs, where the number of poor people is growing much faster than in central cities — a largely unrecognized reversal that calls for a retooling of federal anti-poverty, economic development and transit funding, the Brookings Institution has found…”
  • More poor live in suburbs than in urban areas, research shows, By Emily Alpert, May 19, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “Bucking longstanding patterns in the United States, more poor people now live in the nation’s suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis. As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67% between 2000 and 2011 — a much bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published today. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities…”