Poverty in the Suburbs

Hidden in a Census Bureau report on poverty released in late August is a factoid with significant political and social consequences. Poverty has moved to the suburbs. Or, more accurately, poverty has expanded to the suburbs. Today, 13.8 million poor Americans live in the suburbs--almost as many as the 14.6 million who live in central cities. The suburban poor represent 38.5 percent of the nation's poor, compared with 40.6 percent of the total who live in central cities. The headlines about the Census report focused on the increase in overall poverty--from 11.3 percent of all Americans in 2000, a twenty-six-year low, to 12.5 percent in 2003. In the last year alone, 1.3 million people fell below the poverty line, bringing the total to to 35.9 million. The suburban landscape today has changed. More suburbanites now commute to other suburbs than to cities. A growing number of blacks, Latinos and Asians now live in suburbia, although suburbs are still racially segregated. Similarly, the poor are not randomly scattered across the suburban landscape; they are concentrated in inner-ring suburbs close to cities, as well as in the suburban fringe--former rural towns swept up by suburban sprawl. [more ]