Commentary: Place-Based Policy Must Target Chronically Poor Areas

A commentary in Route Fifty by August Benzow and Kenan Fikri describes how new research explains “how an economically distressed place can transmit poverty from one generation to the next.”

For the authors; it is important to point out that “Pioneering researchers like Harvard’s Raj Chetty have shown that children who grow up in high-poverty environments are less likely to climb the income ladder as adults,” contrary to the popular American narrative of bootstrap success.

For Benzow and Fikri, “the way we measure and target persistent poverty leaves millions of vulnerable Americans invisible to programs intended to support them.” This includes how places are designated as ‘chronically poor,’ which is currently done at the county level. “Looking no deeper severely underestimates the size of the problem and therefore the scope of the challenge. Roughly 20.5 million Americans live in a persistent-poverty county, but 35 million reside in a persistent-poverty census tract.”

The article concludes that “high poverty rates will persist across thousands of American communities because the fabric that weaves them into the national economy has grown threadbare.” The authors call for “a growth agenda for persistent-poverty communities—the very places where the nation’s social and economic challenges are greatest.”