Battered by the economic downturn, the US’ suburbs are bearing the brunt of poverty that has climbed to near-historic levels, creating strains on dwindling safety-net programs focusing mostly on the inner-city poor.
A pair of analyses by the nonprofit Brookings Institution paint a bleak economic picture for the 100 largest US metropolitan areas over the past decade and in the coming years, when the US poverty rate is projected to edge toward 15 percent.
They also come weeks before the Nov. 2 congressional elections, in which voters anxious over the slumping economy will decide whether to keep Democrats in power. Made up of both cities and surrounding suburbs, the large metro areas represent two-thirds of the US population and are home to key battlegrounds that helped lift US President Barack Obama to victory in 2008.
The analyses of census data released yesterday show that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million. That is faster than the national growth rate of 26.5 percent and more than double the city rate of 16.7 percent.
After the recession began in 2007, the suburbs continued to post larger increases in the number of poor — adding 1.8 million, compared with 1.4 million in the cities. Suburbs are now home to roughly one-third of the nation’s poor.
At the same time, social service providers are spread thin in many suburban areas, according to a -detailed Brookings survey of groups in representative metropolitan areas of Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington. That has forced providers to turn away many poor people because of increasingly scarce government and private-sector aid that is typically given to cities first.
“Millions of Americans at all income levels moved to the suburbs looking for better schools, better jobs, affordable housing and a sense of security, but in recent years, as incomes have fallen, people had a harder and harder time making ends meet,” said Scott Allard, a University of Chicago professor who co-wrote one of the reports.
“As a result, Americans who never imagined becoming poor are now asking for assistance and many are not getting the help they need,” he said.
Cities still have higher poverty rates — about 19.5 percent, compared with 10.4 percent in the suburbs. However, the gap has been steadily narrowing. In a reversal from 2000, the number of poor people living in the suburbs now exceeds those in cities by roughly 1.6 million.
Analysts attribute the shift largely to years of middle-class flight and substantial shares of minorities and immigrants leaving cities in the early part of the decade for affordable housing and job opportunities in the suburbs. After the housing bust, their fortunes changed, throwing millions of people out of work.
Nationally, the government reported last month that 14.3 percent of people in the US, or 1 in 7, now live below the poverty line, which is US$21,954 for a family of four. Among the working-age population, poverty is at 12.9 percent, the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a national war on poverty.
Based on unemployment rates that remain near 10 percent, many analysts predict increases in the US poverty rate for at least two more years, with the suburbs continuing to post large gains.
Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate at Brookings, said the numbers highlighted a need for local governments to develop regional approaches to tackling poverty that encompass both city and suburb.
While suburban poverty is a growing problem, Kneebone noted that city poverty also rose significantly in the last year as the downturn began to spread from construction and manufacturing to other sectors of the economy. She said future poverty increases will be partly determined by the pace of economic recovery as well as government policy decisions promoting job growth, affordable housing and transportation.
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