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normal\"> one parent working in the labor force. Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and data at the foundation, said she finds the new data \"particularly disturbing\" because the long-term trends have taken such a turn for the worse. Between 1990 and 2000, concentrated poverty was reduced and things were moving in the right direction. But the decade between 2000 and 2010 tells a different story. \"Poverty is re-concentrating,\" she told me. \"There's more segregation in terms of income in the US and this can have really bad impacts for kids.\" As the report notes, families living in areas of concentrated poverty are more likely to face food hardship, have trouble paying their housing costs, and lack health insurance than those living in more affluent areas. Children are \"more likely to experience harmful levels of stress and severe behavioral and emotional problems than children overall.\" Even children in middle- and upper-income families living in areas of concentrated poverty are 52 percent more likely to fall down the economic ladder as an adult. \"Part of what we want to reinforce is the concept that children don't grow up in isolation,\" said Speer. \"They are affected by both their family's resources and also very much impacted by the community in which they live. The community is critically important because it really does for many kids equate to the opportunities that they have access to.\" The states with the highest rates of children living in concentrated poverty are in the south and southwest, while Detroit (67 percent), Cleveland (57 percent), and Miami (49 percent) have the highest levels among the nation's 50 largest cities. Speer said that although the data is bleak, concentrated poverty \"is not intractable.\" \"There are things that can be done and a lot of innovative ideas out there that are being tried that make me hopeful,\" she said. The report points to new approaches helping people find jobs, education opportunities, and access services outside their neighborhoods, or move to neighborhoods with more opportunities. Public/private partnerships are developing mixed-income neighborhoods in Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, and San Francisco supported by federal programs like the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. These efforts invest in early childhood and education programs for children, and workforce development and asset-building programs for parents and residents. Since 2010, the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities has supported coordination of employment, affordable housing and transportation in 103 metropolitan regions across the country, taking what Speer said is \"a more long-term, realistic approach to the idea of development rather than just moving everything out to the suburbs.\" Finally, the report notes programs like the federal Moving to Opportunity demonstration project, and housing mobility programs for families with Section 8 vouchers, that show promise in helping low-income families move out of areas of concentrated poverty and access affordable housing in low-poverty neighborhoods. But even if Speer is confident that we can take on concentrated poverty, she adds a word of caution. \"What's scary to me is that we really don't know what the impact of the recession is going to be on these communities in the long-term,\" she said. \"This is the initial glimpse at it. But it's hard to even know what's going to be the impact of the foreclosure crisis in the long-term on these communities.\" For further reading and additional resources please see the extended version of this post at The Nation.","author":{"@type":"Person","description":"Greg Kaufmann is a Contributing Writer at The Nation and a Journalist in Residence at the Roosevelt Institute. He also is the founder of TalkPoverty.org.","identifier":"25381025","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8zMTk4NzUwNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTc4NjQ3MDUzMn0.yub3mRJ29-609R17aeDKcA6MGCLrOi7G4B92WIKamTA/image.jpg?width=210"},"name":"greg-kaufmann","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/author/greg-kaufmann"},"dateModified":"2025-02-26T22:19:58Z","datePublished":"2012-02-24T14:07:55Z","description":"Unemployment insurance and poverty","headline":"Screwed Unemployed Workers and Rising Concentrated Poverty","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"600","representativeOfPage":"True","url":"","width":"1200"},"isAccessibleForFree":"True","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/02/24/screwed-unemployed-workers-and-rising-concentrated-poverty","publisher":{"@id":"https://www.commondreams.org/","@type":"Organization","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"511","url":"https://assets.rbl.ms/32373543/origin.png","width":"1501"},"name":"Common Dreams","sameAs":["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Dreams","https://www.facebook.com/commondreams.org","https://twitter.com/commondreams"],"url":"https://www.commondreams.org/"},"speakable":{"@type":"SpeakableSpecification","cssSelector":["h1",".widget__subheadline",".social-author",".body-description"]}},{"@id":"https://www.commondreams.org/","@type":"Organization","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressCountry":"USA","addressLocality":"Portland","addressRegion":"Maine","postalCode":"04112","streetAddress":"PO Box 443"},"alternateName":"CommonDreams.org","contactPoint":{"@type":"ContactPoint","availableLanguage":"English","email":"info@commondreams.org","telephone":"+1-207-775-0488","url":"https://www.commondreams.org"},"ethicsPolicy":"https://www.commondreams.org/ethics-policy","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"511","representativeOfPage":"True","url":"https://assets.rbl.ms/32373543/origin.png","width":"1501"},"name":"Common Dreams","nonprofitStatus":"Nonprofit501c3","publishingPrinciples":"https://www.commondreams.org/publishing-principles","sameAs":["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Dreams","https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010146/","https://www.facebook.com/commondreams.org","https://twitter.com/commondreams","https://www.instagram.com/commondreams/"],"telephone":"207-775-0488","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/"}]}
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