Metropolitan Growth and Economic Opportunity for the Poor: If You're Poor Does Place Matter? (original) (raw)
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Growth and Change, 2008
This paper examines the relationship between U.S. metropolitan county employment growth and poverty. Differential job growth-poverty linkages are found across metropolitan size and type of county. Own-county employment growth significantly reduces central-county poverty in large metropolitan areas relative to suburban county poverty. Compared with larger metropolitan areas, broader metropolitan-wide job growth has more poverty reducing benefits in medium and smaller metropolitan areas, suggesting fewer metropolitan-wide job-accessibility constraints. The results suggest that targeted place-based efforts to spur job growth may help reduce poverty.
Structural Factors Affecting the Location and Timing of Urban Underclass Growth
Urban Geography, 1990
This paper examines the demographic and economic conditions underlying the differential rise of concentrated urban poverty in large northern cities. These cities are shown to have experienced substantially more occupational and industrial restructuring since 1970 than have major cities in the South and the West, particularly losses of jobs that had been held by less educated residents. Despite improvements in their overall schooling levels, relatively few inner-city blacks have acquired education beyond high school, in contrast with employees in new urban growth industries. Underclass blacks with exceptionally high rates of school dropout are especially handicapped in transforming city economies. Whereas the number of jobs not requiring education beyond high school has been increasing in the suburbs, less educated blacks have been spatially constrained to remain in inner-city housing. Within underclass neighborhoods, few households possess private vehicles, which are shown to be increasingly necessary for employment in dispersing metropolitan economies. The implications of interactions between skill mismatches and spatial mismatches are explored. Policies that may have inadvertently contributed to the rise of the urban underclass are discussed as are policies needed to reduce skill and spatial mismatches in metropolitan areas. America's cities are much different places today than they were in the 1960s when many of our assumptions about poverty were formed. Perhaps most striking have been the dramatic changes during the past two decades in the demographic and industrial compositions of our largest northern cities, where the growth of concentrated poverty has been most severe. This paper highlights how these structural transformations placed the residential and employment bases of major northern cities on a collision course that fundamentally altered opportunity ladders for their educationally disadvantaged minority residents and contributed to the rise of a subgroup that has come to be labeled the "urban underclass." To set the stage, I summarize research on the spatial redistribution of poverty concentrations and outline my working theses. I then document locational and temporal features of urban industrial change, weakening demands for less educated laborers residing in the cities, and emerging skills mismatches. Next, the consequences of these changes for post-1970 rises in inner-city black joblessness are illustrated. I conclude with some suggestions about how to improve employment opportunities for disadvantaged urban blacks and reduce their isolation from areas where jobs better matched to their skills are expanding.
Rapid Metropolitan Growth and Community Disparities
Growth and Change, 1992
Does rapid growth in a metropolitan area amplify or reduce disparities among its differentiated communities? Theoretical economic and political arguments can support both tendencies but lean in the direction of greater differentiation and disparities following a period of rapid regional growth. This article examines uneven population, employment and tax base growth as both causes and consequences of economic and social disparities. The analysis posits that growth bypasses the built-up and lowest income communities in favor of the more distant middle-income suburbs with extensive land for development. The implications of these uneven growth patterns are widening inter-municipal disparities consistent with growth rates. The analysis is carried out for the 365 contiguous jurisdictions in northern New Jersey, a region that experienced modest growth in the 1970s and rapid growth in the 1980s. The findings confirm the uneven pattern of growth and widening disparities during the growth spurt of the 1980s. N THIS PAPER, WE EXAMINE INCOME DIFFERENCES among the I numerous contiguous communities of a large metropolitan area, the effects of these income differences on the distribution of population and economic growth, and the effects of rapid growth on the distribution of income among communities. Aggregate city-suburban extreme differences in income as well as wealth, j o b access, race, provision of public services, and government institutions have been the traditional research focus for the study of metropolitan disparities. Prominent examples of such studies include those by Bradford and Kelejian (1973), Guest and Nelson (1978), Logan (1978), Logan and Schneider (1982), and Oakland (1979). We focus on pronounced income and related differences (i.e. disparities) in relation to growth because metropolitan areas increasingly exhibit greater income extremes among their own communities than across metropolitan areas themselves.
2001
This paper measures the relationship between employment growth and employment opportunities for noncollege-educated males, examining variations across metropolitan areas in the living-wage employment ratio for prime-aged males with at most a high school education (less educated). Living-wage employment is full-time, year-round employment yielding annual earnings at or above the official poverty level for a family of four. Dividing the number of less-educated adult males employed in living-wage jobs by the total number of less-educated adult males creates the living-wage employment ratio. The paper examines whether metro areas with the same economic base have the same living-wage employment ratio for less-educated men; factors influencing variation across metropolitan areas in the living-wage employment ratio for these men; and racial differences in the living-wage employment ratio across and within metropolitan areas. Data come from the University of Minnesota's Integrated Publi...
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.
Consequences From the Redistribution of Urban Poverty During the 1990s: A Cautionary Tale
Economic Development Quarterly, 2005
Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the recent spatial redistribution of the urban poor does not necessarily bode well for the future. During the 1990s, the share of metropolitan population living in census tracts with high percentages (more than 40%) of poverty indeed fell significantly, but the shares with 10% to 20% and 20% to 40% poverty rates each rose 1 percentage point. These latter shifts are worrisome because many neighborhoods may have been pushed over their thresholds where poverty concentrations start to create significant external effects for neighbors.
Urban Geography, 2010
Critical geographic perspectives argue that employment access in U.S. metropolitan areas is more complex than traditional understandings, calling for research utilizing approaches that reflect the spatially dynamic structure of cities. This study uses a job proximity indicator of employment access among the working poor, with cluster analysis and spatial regimes modeling, to explore the spatial dimensions of geographic context (neighborhood characteristics) at a localized scale. The findings indicate that: (1) patterns of high or low employment access are not consistent with neoclassical conceptualizations of metropolitan areas; and (2) the statistical relationship between geographic context indicators and the measure of job accessibility were not spatially constant, but varied across the urban landscape. This supports the critical geographic arguments that a high degree of complexity underlies the employment access problem. To better inform public policy, future empirical research needs access to more sophisticated data and methodological approaches to analyze this complex sociospatial phenomenon. [Key words: job access, working poor, spatial variation, metropolitan area.] Access to employment among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in U.S. cities has been a central focus of research over several decades. With the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 in the United States, state assistance to needy families was given new time limits, resulting in an increase in individuals actively seeking employment. Subsequent federal policies (e.g., The Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century) focused on transportation-based solutions to connect low-income persons to jobs in urban areas. However, the primary obstacles and underlying factors that influence job accessibility, and the most appropriate policy solutions, continue to be debated.
Advances in Applied Sociology, 2014
This study introduces a framework to model moderate-to-high poverty transition in urban neighborhoods using their relative competitive positions within metropolitan areas. Relative competitive position is measured by a variety of neighborhood attributes, including resident and neighborhood characteristics, locational attributes, among others. The model was estimated using the decennial census, using tracts from 1990 and 2000 as proxies for neighborhoods. Results indicate that the competitive model works well as a method to evaluate neighborhood poverty transition. Neighborhoods with relatively unfavorable competitive positions within a metropolitan area experience more poverty growth and therefore are likely to have more concentrated poverty in the future. Based on the results, several recommendations are made to intervene. These include promoting public transit, immigrant assimilation programs, among others.