New Report: Concentration of Poverty

Posted by on February 03, 2014

Concentration of Poverty
The Century Foundation and Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Education has published a report by Paul A. Jargowsky titled, “Concentration of Poverty In the New Millennium” detailing the changing demographics and distribution of poverty.

Poverty ebbs and flows due to changes in the economy, changes in demographics, and changes in human capital. In addition, the spatial organization of poverty can contribute to poverty and help to maintain it over generations. For any given number or percentage of poor families in a society, a more concentrated residential pattern of the poor will result in more poor adults living in dangerous neighborhoods with less access to information about jobs. More poor children will grow up with fewer employed role models and attend schools that, on average, function at far lower levels than those of the middle class. Physical and mental health of the poor will also suffer. While the exact extent of these effects is debated, few would dispute that there are costs to the poor of living in economically devastated ghetto or barrio neighborhoods, rather than middle-class or better neighborhoods with good schools, good connections to the labor market, and other public amenities.

For this reason, the spatial distribution of poverty has been an ongoing concern of economists, sociologists, political scientists, and urban planners. After a dramatic increase in the concentration of poverty between 1970 and 1990, there were substantial declines in the 1990s related to a booming economy and changes in housing policy that favored decentralized forms of housing subsidies. Unfortunately, the concentration of poverty has surged once again since 2000.

This issue brief uses data from three waves of the American Community Survey (ACS) five-year census tract files to examine the resurgence of concentrated poverty in detail.

Read more at: http://www.tcf.org/assets/downloads/Concentration_of_Poverty_in_the_New_Millennium.pdf