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Larry Rosenthal , UC Berkeley

Where Will the Poor Live? Housing Policy and the Location of Low-Income Households. Census 2000: Lessons Learned. Larry Rosenthal , UC Berkeley. National Poverty Trends. US Poverty fell from 13.5% in 1990, to 11.8% in 1999, then to 10.1% in 2001 A rising tide … from a dot-com boom!

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Larry Rosenthal , UC Berkeley

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  1. Where Will the Poor Live? Housing Policy and the Location of Low-Income Households Census 2000:Lessons Learned Larry Rosenthal, UC Berkeley

  2. National Poverty Trends • US Poverty fell from 13.5% in 1990, to 11.8% in 1999, then to 10.1% in 2001 • A rising tide … from a dot-com boom! • Historical trend: for those 18 to 65, poverty rate has stayed roughly flat, fluctuating mostly between 11% and 13%, since the early 1980s

  3. Still a Family Matter …

  4. … and an urban one.

  5. Median Poverty Rates - Suburbs

  6. Median Poverty Rates - Cities

  7. Approach • To explore residential poverty, we extract a database of 115 urban metro areas • All population centers > 500,000 • All smaller metro areas > 250,000 having greater than 10% poverty rate • Loci of urban poverty: What are these places like?

  8. Urban Poverty Remains Stagnant • Simple model: 2000 downtown poverty rates as a function of: • 1990 downtown poverty rates • Background economic factors (job growth) • These two factors (both highly significant) together account for > 90% of the variation • Suburban poverty similar, but wider variation

  9. The Urban South Lags Behind • Border towns in Texas suffer exorbitant poverty rates in the urban core: • McAllen: 35.9% • Brownsville: 33.1% • Elsewhere: • New Orleans: 28% • El Paso: 24% • Despite substantial job growth in some regions, downtown concentrations of the poor persist.

  10. Falling Poverty = Desegregation? • Poverty fell substantially during the 90’s • Effects were distributed widely by region; benefits concentrated in suburbs • What can Census 2000 tell us about spatial concentration of the poor in metro areas? • “Dissimilarity” Index calculated for 115 metro areas.

  11. Going in the Right Direction • During the Nineties, average poverty segregation rates fell by 1.9 points on avg. in US central cities • Segregation fell by 1.7 points on avg. across US metro areas • Nevertheless, one-quarter of metro areas faced increasing downtown segregation of the poor (e.g., Sacramento; Salem, OR)

  12. Some Progress on Urban African-American Segregation • Almost no large metro area in the US exacerbated segregation of black households in the Nineties, and most marginally reduced it • Substantial improvement (more than 10 points off the dissimilarity index) noted across the map • These statistics are perhaps a remnant of how bad segregation became in places like Detroit and Philadelphia (D>.60 in some areas)

  13. The US Suburban Racial Divide • African-Americans -- Poverty segreg. fell: • 11% rural • 14% urban core • Only 5% in suburbs • Hispanic -- Similarly lopsided gains: • 11% rural • 8% urban core • 4% in suburbs • (source: Prof. Paul Jargowsky, UT-Dallas)

  14. Does “smart growth” end up isolating the poor? • Curious pattern in the data: • Higher central-city and metro segregation of the poor signif. associated with faster gains in urban population density • Such areas also added jobs faster and relieved black racial segregation better, on average • Picture emerges of “containment” of aging housing stock in older suburbs, isolated from economic development

  15. Suburban Poverty: A New Urban Policy Frontier? • In Census 2000, rising metro poverty outside the central cities is significantly associated with: • Slower metro job growth in and around the largest cities • Greater black and hispanic racial segregation across the metro area • Greater spatial dispersion of the poor • Decreased population densities

  16. Metro Population and Economic Expansion Track One Another

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