Poor people, gross. They’re everywhere. They beg for food or money, live off the government, and work low wage jobs. Thank goodness they live in the cities and aren’t disturbing my queit, sheltered life in the suburbs. Whether you say it out loud or not, when you see someone you deem as poor, part of your subconscience is thinking what I just said. You feel guilty for thinking it, so do I. You also don’t 100% beleive it. You have some compassion for the poor, but the fact that most of them live in the cities is hardly what you would call “a bad thing”.
Well, sorry to burst your suburban bubble, but the poor are moving out of the beltways and into the burbs, at least according to a report by the Brookings Institute on income migration, which studied the geographic movement of the different income classes from 2000-2008. To say they found interesting stuff would be an understatement.
Before we get to some of the cooler stuff, let’s get the stuff you should know out of the way first. Let’s look at some cities with the highest poverty rates. If you live around the Great Lakes, you win. Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit all are in the top 10, as well as Youngstown, OH. Sharing the top spot with Youngstown is Hartford CT with a urban poverty rate of 33.5%. When you look at towns with the lowest poverty rates, you’re looking at San Jose, Honolulu, Boise, and Norfolk VA. The average of the 10 with the lowest poverty rates works out to about 10% and the average among all the cities is about 18.2%. It’s no surprise why the towns stack up where they are. Rust belt jobs are few and far between these days thanks to automation and offshoring. Many of the towns with low poverty rates are vacation destinations so the people that live there tend to have made good money and settled in to the towns they like.
But what is much more insteresting is the poverty rates in suburbs. I won’t give away the juicy bits, but if you live south of I40 or in California’s case, east if I5, you’ll be disappointed. You also won’t be surprised with many of the suburbs with low poverty rates as they’re centered around titans of commerce such as LA, DC, Boston, and NY. All this can be found on page 6 of the report.
Again, no real surprises here. But let’s look at the migration of the poor over the last decade on page 9. This is much more interesting. Let’s look at Baltimore. Baltimore does really well in the category of having a low poverty rate in the suburbs. But all is not well. The poor are moving out of the city. In 2000, 41% of the poor lived in the burbs. In 2008, that number had jumped to more than 50%. If that swing doesn’t sound significant then let me rephrase it. Baltimore is third only to rust belt Cleveland and Katrina stricken New Orleans in terms of suburban poor migration. Atlanta isn’t far behind in growth of poor in the suburbs, but for them the stats are different. 85% of the poor in Atlanta live in the suburbs, which as far as I could tell is tops in the country.
What’s going on in the towns where the poor are moving to the suburbs? I’ve got a definitive answer, and a theory. The known cause is certainly the recession. Even though this data was for 2008, that was far enough along for people to start feeling the pinch. It may not have been so much as people in the suburbs getting new neighbors, just that those neighbors they had crossed the line into poverty. Of course the subprime loan fiasco put more poor people in homes, which I can imagine played its part as well. But I’ve got another theory.
Urban areas are pushing the poor people out. I’m not going to tell you where I’ve been lately, but I am in an area where I commute into the city via a rail system. Here’s what I see on the rail, white collar people are heading into town. As I get off at my stop I see who is waiting to head out of town for work. They’re wearing uniforms distinctive of retail and service jobs that pay low wages. You could sum my oberservation up as the high income workers are commuting in, and low income workers are commuting out. As we all get tired of commuting, we start moving closer to work. This hardly represents the majority of us, but especially the people of my generation, we’re interested in living closer to work.
But the poor are being forced out of cities in another way. Has your local urban area put in some hot new condos lately? I’ll bet they have, especailly since this recession is still very much a blue collar one. Chances are that condo flattened some kind of lower-income housing to move in. That is a direct displacement of the poor right there. Just the other day my wife and I scouted out some “green” residences we saw online close to the downtown area, only to discover they’re right in the heart of a rough urban area. Even though these houses only took up a couple of acres of space, older, low-income homes were clearly flattened to put them up.
Will there be an all out shift of the poor to the outskirts of town? No. But we are seeing a trend where the lines are starting to blur. It will be interesting to see what happens as we recover from the recession. Will the trend continue, or will there be a reversal? It all depends on where the jobs are, which is where the people are. Chicken, meet egg.
Photo: Wm Jas
 By The Weakonomist |
The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice. |
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nice article, thanks…