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TechnoratiPoverty Spreading in Suburbs: Study
The study by the Federal Reserve's Community Affairs department and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program found that poverty levels in the world's richest nation were on the rise.
![[A sign reading 'Foreclosure For Sale' is posted on a house in the Boston suburb of Dedham, Massachusetts March 15, 2007.
REUTERS/Brian Snyder]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/foreclosure.jpg "foreclosure.jpg")
"It shows that concentrated poverty is still very much with us, and that it can be found among a much more diverse set of communities and families than previous research has emphasized," said Bruce Katz, a director Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.
"Poverty is spreading and may be re-clustering in suburbs, where a majority of America's metropolitan poor now live."
The study was released ahead of next week's conference on concentrated poverty at the Fed. It shied away from explaining the causes of poverty, but past research have linked the phenomenon to loss of jobs in manufacturing, agriculture and mining.
With the U.S. economic outlook rapidly deteriorating, poverty could get worse.
The U.S. housing market collapse has unleashed the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, forcing business to scale back on investments and driving the unemployment rate to a 14-year high.
Data on Tuesday showed the U.S. economy contracted 0.5 percent in the third quarter, its fastest pace in seven-years, with consumer spending dropping to a 28-year low.
Many analysts believe the United States already has joined Europe in recession, though it will take another quarter of contraction to meet a widely used definition for it -- back-to-back quarters of declining output.
The study noted that a strong economy had helped to reduce the incidence of concentrated poverty across the United States, but the process might have stalled during the current decade.
"Not only does concentrated poverty affect the big, older inner cities in the North, but it also exists within smaller cities in the South and West," said Katz.
"While the case studies in this report point to unique factors that accompanied rising poverty in each of these communities, the negative consequences ring familiar across places, big and small ... African American, white, Latino and Native American.
7 Comments so far
Show AllSorry if I can't take anything the Brookings Institution says seriously, as they continued to employ laughably obtuse Iraq War cheerleaders Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack long after it was obvious to other independent analysts that Junior's Bust in the Dust was an utter catastrophe. Frankly, I don't think the insulated B.I. wool-gatherers could find a recession if the instructions were printed on the boot heel, so to speak.
Read "Stability in Iraq: A War We Just Might Win"
by O'Hanlon and Pollack, July 30, 2007:
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0730iraq_ohanlon.aspx
*******
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith (with apologies to any astrologers out there).
The fact is, while the economists are dithering over whether we are in a recession, much of Suburbia has been in a depression for several years, along with the small-town 'real' America that the Hockey Momster of the North babbled about in the last election.
Throughout the Midwest, suburbs and small villages that, less than a decade ago, had thriving downtown shopping areas now feature boarded up and empty town squares devoid of people, as if a neutron bomb had struck, with any remaining commerce relegated to the soulless cheesy Generica of big box stores and strip malls on the outskirts of town, taking their place just off the state highway with the McSame fast-food franchises and cookie-cutter 'family restaurant' chains.
While they may not have had much agricultural or mining work, small manufacturers once hired locals and were an important part of a town's economy, even in the suburbs. Those jobs disappeared overseas or the companies went bankrupt years ago; vacant factories dot the landscape like ghosts reminding us of the days when we actually produced something in this country other than amorphous and low-paying 'services.'
If you live near the Great Lakes, take a drive through a typical suburban subdivision; even two years ago you'd find every other home has a For Sale or foreclosure sign, and many sit empty. Police departments and sheriff's offices have had to cut staff as the tax base drops, as have city governments; roads are falling into potholed disrepair, and hospitals and schools are closed, along with community amenities such as swimming pools and basketball or tennis courts.
As a sign of the growing disaffection of suburbanites with conservative economic polices, starting in 2004 even rock-ribbed former Republican strongholds such as DuPage County, west of Chicago, have been voting Democratic and Bill Foster, an unabashed liberal Democrat, replaced none other than ex-GOP House Speaker Rep. Denny Hastert in ruby red IL-14.
All this suffering has been going on while the fatuous Ivory Tower pinheads of such 'think' tanks as the useless Brookings pore over statistics which are mainly compiled of numbers fudged or forged to avoid blame for our economic disaster.
Perhaps Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program director Bruce Katz will one day stand in line in some nice suburb to receive his box of bulk macaroni, ramen noodles and old canned goods and the full impact of misery in Bush's 'recession' will penetrate his tweedy consciousness.
Short of that, such lofty studies from the Federal Reserve or Brookings Institution informing the victims of the bleeding obvious are only good for fireplace kindling when the gas is cut off and the peasantry needs heat.
I dunno but I hear that even in the suburbs, renting isn't necessarily cheaper than buying. I'll bet the landlords cashed in on this and increased their monthly rental fees big time.
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
The biggest cause of concentrated poverty is concentrated wealth.
I spoke with a woman in her 40s who works as a waitress on an Indian reservation or near one. She said she gets all of $3 an hour. That isn't even minimum wage. The restaurant's owner must be a neocon. Our paid "representatives" dine on lobster, prime rib, caviar, champagne, etc. at $1,000 and more dinners while millions more Americans receive food stamps.
I hate to say "That's what you get!" but lets face it, Suburbia was the stronghold of the Republican party. This is what blind, obsequious allegiance to a party of fear and hate bring you.
Let's just go with "I told you so."
How many suburbanites are employed in "agriculture and mining" ??
Poverty, a growth Industry!!
Why not PRIVATIZE a "war on poverty!". Sign Government contracts with firms who will use the free market approach to combat poverty. The more peoples in poverty the greater the size of the contract!
With such monies CEOS can hire all these inner city folk as Housemaids and gardeners. Maybe get them to pick cotton on their plantations. In return those living in poverty will get a roof over their heads and two square meals a day.
The CEOS and business class will have to make some sort of promise not to whip the same for being disobedient more then say three times a week.
They can then sign "Business Contracts" that allow them to shift these now saved "workers" amongst one another depending on need.