Suburban Poverty

Buffalo reporters Maki Becker and Jay Rey look at a Brookings Institution report that reveals the majority of locals living below the poverty line live in the Erie and Niagara county suburbs.

In the last ten years, more than two thirds of poverty growth has happened in suburban areas of American cities. According to Brookings', social services such as transit have failed to keep up in the face of decreasing tax revenue.

A Brookings Study of census data finds that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4% to 13 million and "the growth rate of suburban poverty is more than double that of cities."

Fast Company pulls together a handful of recent reports to paint a grim picture for the suburbs, as the number of people living in poverty rises, housing values decline, and infrastructure built in the 60s and 70s erodes.