The Changing Intrametropolitan Location of High-poverty Neighbourhoods in the US, 1990-2000 (original) (raw)

Migration Patterns and the Growth of High‐Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970‐1990

American Journal of Sociology, 1999

The proportion of the population residing in high-poverty urban areas grew in the 1970s and 1980s (Wilson 1987; Jargowsky 1997). This paper examines why the number of high-poverty neighborhoods increased by using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) matched with data on tracts from the decennial census. The main findings are that (1) African Americans are moving into white neighborhoods at a high rate, but the white population is declining in areas with substantial black populations quickly enough that the proportion black in white areas is not increasing and (2) there is no systematic tendency for poverty rates among stayers in poor neighborhoods to increase over time relative to poverty rates of other neighborhood types, although there is some evidence of a larger increase in the poverty rate of moderately poor black neighborhoods than other neighborhood types during the early 1980s recession. Implications of the findings for theories of high-poverty neighborhoods and racial segregation are discussed. Migration Patterns and the Growth of High-Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970-1990 William Wilson's book The Truly Disadvantaged (1987) first pointed out that starting in the 1970s areas of concentrated urban poverty increasingly took on a different character than they had earlier in the century. As in the ethnic ghettos that have long interested urban sociologists, dwellers in modern poor urban neighborhoods are almost all members of minority races or ethnicities. Wilson argues, however, that unlike older ethnic ghettos, poor neighborhoods of the 1970s and 1980s contained an especially high concentration of poor families. He hypothesizes that one cause of this trend is that middle-class blacks in the 1970s and 1980s increasingly relocated to predominantly white suburbs, leaving behind neighborhoods composed largely of poor or near-poor families. Wilson's work led empirical researchers to examine data to confirm or deny these suspicions. Investigations by Jargowsky (1994, 1997) have supported some of Wilson's hypotheses, finding that the proportion of the urban population living in census tracts in which at least 40 percent of the population is poor increased from 3 percent of the urban population in 1970 to 4.5 percent in 1990 (Jargowsky 1997, p. 38). Tests of Wilson's hypotheses about why this has occurred have been contradictory, and a considerable debate continues about why poor urban neighborhoods have expanded so sharply. An increase in the number of high-poverty urban neighborhoods can be thought of as resulting from a combination of two proximate causes: change in rates of poverty among urban residents and change in the tendency for persons of like poverty status to live close to each other. I decompose flows of persons among neighborhood and poverty status categories over time to examine how each of these proximate causes has influenced the number of high-poverty neighborhoods. This procedure sheds light on several explanations of the increase in neighborhood poverty. Along the way I consider evidence relevant to debates about the role of racial segregation in explaining concentrated urban poverty. I argue that studies of the role of racial segregation in forming high-poverty neighborhoods have not always clearly separated evidence about change over time from

Where did they go? The decline of middle-income neighborhoods in metropolitan America

Brookings Institution, 2006

Analysis of 1970 to 2000 decennial census data for families and neighborhoods in the 100 largest metropolitan areas, and in the cities and suburbs of 12 selected metropolitan areas, finds that: ■ Middle-income neighborhoods as a proportion of all metropolitan neighborhoods declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000. This dramatic decline far outpaced the corresponding drop in the proportion of metropolitan families earning middle incomes, from 28 percent in 1970 to 22 percent in 2000. ■ Between 1970 and 2000, lower-income families became more likely to live in lower-income neighborhoods, and higher-income families in higher-income neighborhoods. Only 37 percent of lower-income families lived in middle-income neighborhoods in 2000, down from 55 percent in 1970. ■ The proportion of neighborhoods that were middle-income shrank faster than the proportion of families that were middle-income in each of 12 large metropolitan areas examined. Among the 12 metro areas, Los Angeles-Long Beach, Baltimore, and Philadelphia experienced much more dramatic declines in middle-income neighborhoods than San Antonio and Louisville. ■ Only 23 percent of central-city neighborhoods in the 12 large metropolitan areas had a middle-income profile in 2000, down from 45 percent in 1970. A majority of families (52 percent) and neighborhoods (60 percent) in these cities had low or very low incomes relative to their metropolitan area median in 2000. ■ A much larger proportion-44 percent-of suburban neighborhoods in the 12 metropolitan areas had a middle-income profile in 2000. Yet this proportion fell over the 30-year period, too, from 64 percent in 1970, accompanying a smaller decline in suburban middle-income families. Suburban middle-income neighborhoods were replaced in roughly equal measure by low-income and very high-income neighborhoods. Although middle-income families have declined considerably as a share of the overall family income distribution, it is noteworthy that middle-class neighborhoods have disappeared even faster in metropolitan areas, especially in cities. This trend suggests increased sorting of high-and low-income families into neighborhoods that reflect their own economic profiles, and increased vulnerability of middle-class neighborhoods "tipping" towards higher-or lower-income status. The resulting disparities among neighborhoods create new challenges for policies to enhance household mobility, improve the delivery of key public services, and promote private-sector investment in struggling locales.

The Fortunes of Poor Neighborhoods

Urban Affairs Review, 2003

The authors examine the longitudinal fortunes of the poorest fifth of U.S. metropolitan neighbor-hoods, defined as those with 20% or higher poverty rates in 1980. They employ logistic regression to identify the factors correlated with 1980-1990 increases and decreases in poverty rates across these poor neighborhoods and examine whether factors vary by predominant racial/ethnic composition. Regional economic cycles and population growth performance are the dominant determinants of neighborhood poverty change, although the neighborhood's initial poverty rate also influences it. Neighborhoods with higher poverty rates in 1980 evince less stability. Extremely poor neighborhoods are roughly as likely to experience an increase in poverty of 5 or more percentage points as a comparable decrease in poverty. The authors conclude that continued poverty is not the only or even most likely fate of poor neighborhoods; their fortunes depend on both local and regional context.

The Geography of Urban Poverty

2008

The Census Bureau reports poverty statistics annually based on American Community Survey (ACS) data. For the past two years this has included listing the ten places with the highest poverty rates and the ten with the lowest poverty rates. This study considers the interpretation of these statistics when different geographies form the analytical framework. As expected, interpretation of these statistics is influenced by the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) in geography.

An Evaluation of the Causes of Urban Poverty in America: A Cross Section Analysis

1998

An evaluation of the causes of Urban Poverty in America: A cross section Analysis. In this study, I analyze and evaluate the determinants of poverty rate differentials among 77 urban centers in the United States, as described by Isabel Sawhill (1988). The regression results show that demographic changes, education, welfare programs, unemployment rates, per capita income and income inequality are the most important factors that have a strong statistical link to urban poverty rates. Based on my analysis, the crime rate is not a statistically significant determinant of the rate of poverty among American families.

Metropolitan Growth and Economic Opportunity for the Poor: If You're Poor Does Place Matter?

2001

This paper focuses on why metropolitan areas vary in their capacity to translate generally high employment rates into economic opportunity for the disadvantaged. Data come from the Urban Institute's Urban Underclass Database, which includes poverty and employment data for 1980 and 1990 for the 100 largest metropolitan areas down to the Census tract level. Despite unprecedented economic growth since 1993, large segments of the population remain poor, and many cities have unacceptably high rates of poverty and economic disadvantage. The first section of this paper illustrates the wide divergence among metro areas along two dimensions: (1) the proportion of residents employed, compared with the proportion who are poor and (2) the relationship between 1980-90 employment change in a metro area and the 1980-90 change in that area's poverty rate. The second section uses multiple regression to distill the systematic influence of structural factors on the ability of a metro area to c...