Race and Concentrated Poverty

Posted on August 14, 2015 by admin

• Black poverty differs from white poverty, By Emily Badger, August 12, 2015, Washington Post: “The poverty that poor African Americans experience is often different from the poverty of poor whites. It’s more isolating and concentrated. It extends out the door of a family’s home and occupies the entire neighborhood around it, touching the streets, the schools, the grocery stores. A poor black family, in short, is much more likely than a poor white one to live in a neighborhood where many other families are poor, too, creating what sociologists call the ‘double burden’ of poverty. The difference is stark in most major metropolitan areas, according to recent data analyzed by Rutgers University’s Paul Jargowsky in a new report for the Century Foundation…”
• Louisville 10th worst for high black poverty areas, By Phillip M. Bailey, August 10, 2015, Louisville Courier-Journal: “As the Metro Council debates ways to encourage affordable housing in the East End, a New York-based think tank released a report showing Louisville is the 10th worst city for concentrated black poverty in the nation. About 43 percent of the poorest black residents in the Louisville metro area are housed in neighborhoods where the federal poverty rate was 40 percent or more, according to the report by the Century Foundation…”
• Poverty has nearly doubled since 2000 in America, By Max Willens, August 9, 2015, International Business Times: “A year after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, people are talking about a newly galvanized civil-rights movement in the U.S.  A new report, finding that the number of people living in high-poverty areas has almost doubled since 2000, suggests that its rebirth is sorely needed.  According to Century Foundation research, the number of Americans living in high-poverty areas rose to 13.8 million in 2013 from 7.2 million in 2000, with African-Americans and Latinos driving most of the gains. The report points to racially motivated policies such as exclusionary zoning and trends such as white flight as the primary culprits…”