When Poverty Grows in the City, Poverty Grows in the Suburbs

Major cities aren't islands when it comes to growing poverty, according to this analysis from Rolf Pendall.

"Like the rebound of concentrated poverty in metropolitan America since 2000, however, suburban poverty growth reflects spreading metropolitan poverty more than urban policy, housing policy, or housing demand in a few neighborhoods. A city in a metro area where poverty grew in the 2000s had less than one chance in ten of avoiding some poverty growth. That rate held regardless of city size, so being a central city or large city certainly didn't protect jurisdictions from poverty growth. This same pattern holds in other jurisdiction types. More than nine out of ten unincorporated counties and townships, regardless of their population, also saw poverty grow if their metro area's poverty rate was rising. Since poverty grew in 809 of the nation's 938 metro and micropolitan areas in the 2000s, both the suburbanization and the urbanization of poverty were facts of life throughout America in the 2000s."