Concentrated Poverty

American Trends
1970-1990
Between 1970 and 1990 the number of
people living in high-poverty
neighborhoods - where the poverty rate
is 40% or higher - doubled. Because the
measure was not used in the US census
until 1970, the first time trends of
poverty concentration were studied
systematically was after the release of
1980s, as the number of neighborhoods
qualifying as areas of "extreme poverty"
continued to increase, but at a slower
rate than it had throughout the
1970s. These trends of concentrated
poverty at the level of the census tract
and neighborhood were similarly
reflected at the level of Metropolitan
Statistical Areas (MSA's). In both
decades between 1970–1990, the
differential between the poverty rates of
central cities and their suburbs
increased, reflecting an increasing
the 1980 census. Sociologist William
Julius Wilson found that during the
1970s, (1) poverty increased
dramatically throughout metropolitan
areas of the United States; (2) at the
same time, the number of poor people
residing within these areas increased;
and (3) this exacerbation of poverty
conditions occurred primarily within
African American neighborhoods.
Several scholars would go on to affirm
that in the 1970s America saw a
dramatic increase in the number of
neighborhoods that classified as areas
of concentrated poverty. This trend
extended to a lesser extent in the
spatial concentration of MSA poverty
within central cities. This changing
spatial distribution of poverty has been
attributed to changes in the labor market
(deindustrialization, an increasing gap
between wages available to skilled and
unskilled workers, spatial mismatch
between the types of jobs offered in the
city and the type of workers residing
there), declining economic growth
(although several studies have shown a
weak or non-existent link between
reduction of poverty and urban
economic growth in neighborhoods of
extreme poverty), the relocation of
upper- and middle-income residents
Page 27 of 134