Poverty Rates: The Suburban Life Loses Its Luster

Brookings released its “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” study and one of its primary findings was that:

For decades, suburbs added poor residents at a faster pace than cities, so that suburbia is now home to more poor residents than central cities, composing over a third of the nation’s total poor population. Unfortunately, the antipoverty infrastructure built over the past several decades does not fit this rapidly changing geography. The solution no longer fits the problem.

One flaw stands out in the Brookings assumption, which is that “antipoverty” measures ever worked at all, no matter where the poor were located. The poverty rates of New York State and Kentucky were identical at about 14.5%, based on the figure as measured by household income in 2009. New York City’s population is 8.3 million, compared to the state’s population of 19.4 million. And that number does not include the city populations of Buffalo, Rochester or Albany. Kentucky has 4.8 million residents. The poorest residents live on the West Virgina border, one of the most abjectly poor regions in the Unite State.

Two states, in comparison, do not make a case. Suffice it to say that the poorest regions of Kentucky are not suburbs. And there are large pockets of poverty within the cities of New York.

Individual examples by city or state do not address the fact that the poor in the United States have remained poor for decades, no matter where people with incomes below the poverty line live. The poverty rate in America was more than 15% in 2010. That compares with less than 12% in the mid-1970s. The two other years when the poverty rate was above 15% since 1975 where in the recession-battered years of 1983 and 1993. Location may be one factor that drives poverty rates, but the overall economy has at least as much influence, if not more.

At the root of the argument about poverty and how it can be alleviated, once again, are the numbers. No federal program has made a difference in the past four decades. And there is no reason to think that will change, based on whether the poor have moved to the suburbs.