Concentrated Poverty

I. Introduction
Concentrated Poverty
Concentrated Poverty refers to
a spatial density of socio-economic
deprivation. In the US, it is commonly
used in fields of policy and scholarship
in reference to areas of "extreme" or
"high-poverty" defined by the US census
as areas with "40 percent of the tract
population living below the federal
History
The Invention of the Measure
poverty threshold." A large body of
literature argues that these areas of
concentrated poverty place additional
burdens on poor families that live within
them, beyond what the families' own
individual circumstances would dictate.
The research also indicates that areas
of concentrated poverty can have wider
effects on surrounding neighborhoods
that are not classified as "high-poverty,"
thus limiting overall economic
potential and social cohesion.
There have long been areas of
concentrated poverty, and the distinct
social problems of concentrated poverty,
which exacerbate individual impoverishment
have been the grounds of reform
movements and studies since the mid-
19th Century. However, the measure of
concentrated poverty and the
coalescence around an analytical
conception of concentrated poverty
occurred only in the 1970s. This more
recent focus on concentrated poverty
grew largely out of concern about the
nation’s inner cities in the wake of
ongoing deindustrialization, civil unrest
in the late 1960s, and the rapid
suburbanization and out-migration that
followed. In most cases, these
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