Bucking longstanding patterns in the United States, more poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis.
As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67 percent between 2000 and 2011 - a bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published Monday. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities.
Authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube cited a long list of reasons for the shift.
More poor people moved to the suburbs, pulled by more affordable homes or pushed out by urban gentrification, the authors said. Some used the increased mobility of housing vouchers, which used to be restricted by area, to seek better schools and safer neighborhoods in suburbia. Still others, including immigrants, followed jobs as the booming suburbs demanded more workers, many for low-paying service-sector jobs.
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Change also came from within. More people in the suburbs slipped into poverty as manufacturing jobs disappeared, the authors found. The housing boom and bust also walloped many homeowners on the outer ridges of metropolitan areas, hitting pocketbooks hard. On top of that, the booming numbers of poor people in the suburbs were driven, in part, by the exploding growth of the suburbs themselves.
The shift caught many communities by surprise, the authors found, with public and private agencies unprepared to meet the need in suburban areas.
"The myth of suburban prosperity has been a stubborn one," said Christopher Niedt, who as academic director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University is familiar with the trend Brookings described.
Even as suburban poverty emerged, "many poorer communities were so segregated from the wealthy in suburbs that many people were able to ignore it," Niedt said.
As poverty shifted to the suburbs across the country, however, help has not always kept pace, Brookings researchers said. Many suburbs are thin on safety nets. Public transportation is often scant, making it harder for the suburban poor to reach jobs and assistance.
However, while the number of poor people in suburban areas now outstrips those in urban centers, the average U.S. suburb still has a much smaller percentage of its people living in poverty - 12 percent - than the urban average of 22 percent.
Because of that fact, programs combating poverty have historically been geared toward cities, such as revitalizing urban neighborhoods. But targeting neighborhoods doesn't work in suburbs where poor people are scattered. Coordinating programs across smaller communities means braving a thicket of different requirements.
The study defined poverty using the federal poverty line, which stood at $22,350 for a family of four in 2011.
