I have posted on this subject
here several times before. But the bad "news" re-emerged once again this week when the middle-of-the-road
Brookings Institution published
this report on the
suburbanizaton of poverty in the United States. Before we get to that phenomenon, let's have a look at the "Top 10" cities in the United States ranked in terms of the percentage of their populations living at or below the (niggardly annual income of $21,834 for a family of four that constitutes the) Federal poverty level. Here they are:
1 - Hartford, CT ......................................... 33.5%
2 - Youngstown, OH-PA ........................... 33.5%
3- Detroit-Warren, MI ............................. 30.7%
4 - Cleveland, OH ..................................... 30.5%
5 - Buffalo, NY .......................................... 30.3% (53.0%)
6 - Syracuse, NY ....................................... 29.7% (53.1%)
7 - Rochester, NY ..................................... 29.3% (53.5%)
8 - Dayton, OH ......................................... 29.2%
9 - McAllen, TX ........................................ 28.3%
10 - Provo, UT .......................................... 28.2%
Note the three cities in red (the parenthetical numbers are the proportion of the
population living in princely style at less than
twice the federal poverty level) . Moving eastward along the thruway we find Albany, the state capital, is relatively affluent -
only 24.9% of its population falls into the poverty category! The worse news is that the poverty rate in the suburban areas surrounding these cities is growing rapidly. In 2008 the suburban areas that encircle each of the three Western New York cities had poverty rates of between 8.2% and 8.6%. The
Brookings folks project continued robust growth on this score in the immediate future. This pattern is a political and economic scandal.
