http://www.theatlanticcitie.com/neighborhoods/2014/03/us-cities-where-poor-are-most-segregated/8655/
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Lonesome building
Cleveland, Ohio
blog.case.edu |
Hello Everyone:
Today I would like to write more about urban poverty in the United States. Historically, the United States has always been looked at as the "land of plenty." Increasingly, this is not the case. According to the United States Census Bureau, an estimated 15% or 46.5 million lived below the poverty line in 2012.
(https://www.census.gov) In addition to the alarming statistic, more and more of the poor are become isolated throughout America. Richard Florida reports in
The Atlantic Cities a study conducted by Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff which documented poor families between 1970 and 2009. The Reardon and Bischoff study presented evidence that suggests that number of poor families doubled from 8% to 18% and shows no sign of easing up.
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Rowhouses
globalhiphopbattles.com |
The rising concentration of poverty brings forth a host of problems to the attending communities. The less advantaged communities not only lack economic resources but also suffer from higher crime and drop-out rates, higher infant mortality, and higher incidents of chronic diseases. In William Julius White's classic urban planning book,
The Truly Disadvantaged, Mr. White called attention to the deleterious social impact that comes with spatial concentrations of poverty, which "include the kinds of ecological niches that the residents of these neighborhoods occupy in terms of access to jobs and job networks, availability of marriageable partners, involvement in quality schools, and exposure to conventional role models." Thus, Mr. Florida ponders how segregated are the poor in America cities?
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Concentrations of urban poverty
theatlanticcities.com |
In the map on the left-hand side, we see the extent of segregated areas of poverty across American cities. The dark blues areas present the places where poor households are the most isolated; the light blue show very segregated, green represents areas of moderate segregation; and yellow presents lower levels of segregation. The map shows the metropolitan areas where the poor are the most segregated are primarily located along the East Coast from New England to the Mid-Atlantic states, across the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, and parts of Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. Ranking the ten largest metropolitan areas (one million or more people) where the poor experience the highest and lowest levels of segregation, the Milwaukee-Waukesha-WEst Allies, Wisconsin area sit atop the list and the Memphis, Tennessee-Missouri, Arkansas region is number ten.
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Camden, New Jersey
ministrywith.org |
Large metropolitan areas where the poor are the most segregated are located in the Midwest and Northeast. Milwaukee has the highest level followed by: Hartford, Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Buffalo and New York City, New York; Denver, Colorado; Baltimore, Maryland and Memphis, Tennessee. Richard Florida clarifies that many of the Rust Belt cities listed have large minority populations that have been greatly affected by deindustrialization. When we take into account medium and smaller-sized cities, many of the places with the greatest concentrations of poverty are surprisingly college towns. Why is this the case? Simply put, the divide is more evident. State College, Pennsylvania (Penn State University) ranks number one in poverty segregation; Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) is number five and New Haven, Connecticut (Yale) is tenth.
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Poverty banner
urban.org |
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Sunbelt and Western metropolitan areas are places where the poor are the least isolated. Four out the ten least segregated metropolitans are located in Florida: Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville. Many of these locales have lower wage service economies but are also centers of the high tech industry and knowledge-based work such as: San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley; Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The metropolitan areas where the poor at the least segregated are smaller regions. Richard Florida reports that there are approximately eighty smaller and medium-sized metropolitan areas where the poor are the least isolated than the least-segregated large areas. Jacksonville, North Carolina has the lowest level of poverty segregation, followed by: Medford, Oregon; Hinesville-Fort Stewart, Georgia; and Prescott, Arizon.
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Public housing project in the United States
the5thestate.asia |
What are the factors that affect the levels of poverty segregation? Charlotta Mellander of the Martin Prosperity Institute ran a basic correlation analysis between poverty segregation and key economic, social, and demographic characteristics of metropolitan areas. What Ms. Mellander found was that the poor faces higher levels of segregation in larger, denser areas. This segregation is closely associated with density (.54) and less so with the size of the metropolitan area (.43). The reason for this maybe the greater numbers of very rich and very poor; density and high real estate values encourage placement according to socio-economic status. The competition for housing is greater, thus creating higher prices which leave the poor with fewer options and leading to greater concentrations of poverty. Poverty segregation is more evident in affluent metropolitans, since the index of segregation is positively correlated with three key factors of regional development: average wage (.46), per capita incomes (.42), and economic output per capita (.34). The poor also face greater levels of isolation in center of knowledge-based economies. It is also positively associated with the percent of adult college graduates (.51), a frequent indicator of human capital; the number of workers in knowledge, professional, and creative jobs (.48), and the concentration of the high tech industry (.47).
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U.S. poverty
huffingtonpost.com |
Conventional wisdom has it that places with higher levels of poverty segregation are also places of higher income inequality. Surprisingly, Ms Mellander's analysis found there only a modest relationship between the two (.20). In short, poverty segregation is more closely associated with how affluent a metropolitan area is on the average than income inequality. How much money people have matters more than the gap between rich and poor. One possible reason is that people in affluent metropolitans have greater means to segregate themselves. Since housing prices track incomes, said prices could very well leave the poor with fewer options and reinforce the separation between rich and poor.
In the United States, race is also a factor in poverty segregation. However, Ms. Mellander found that the association between race and poverty segregation across the country is not as strong as one would think. The segregation of poverty is positively connected with the portion of the population that is African-American (.12) and Asian (.22), but not significantly associated with Caucasian or Latino. It is helpful to point out that this analysis does not take into account long-held connections between race and poverty on the whole, but instead the association between race and poverty segregation. Despite the fact that race and poverty are historically linked in American cities, poverty segregation is slightly more or less depending on the overall racial characteristics of the metropolitan area. Once again, this may indicate how the segregation of the poor is formed more by housing and location options afforded to more affluent groups.
Poverty is not just about the lack of economic resources, it is also geographically concentrated and brings with it a host of attending challenges. One of which is that certain neighborhoods get stigmatized leading to alienations from important and necessary institutions; establishing a cycle of decline that goes on for generations.
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