Poverty moves into the suburbs
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Life in America's suburbs, isn't all commuting and scout meetings anymore, if it ever was.
Among its many side effects, the Great Recession brought into stark relief the fact that poverty has taken root in the nation's suburban areas. Once seen as a problem only in urban and rural areas, the strains caused by lost jobs or low income employment are now shared by neighborhoods that were often created as havens from a city's ills.
"It's a longer historical trend where you're seeing cities and suburbs moving closer together, not just in unemployment but also in poverty and food stamps," said Emily Garr, a research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
On Friday, the government announced the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent and, if this month's data pans out the same as others have since the recession's start, the growth of suburban unemployment will continue to outpace that of urban unemployment.
The change is not readily apparent in a year-over-year comparison, but it stands out when looking at data over the last two decades.
The trend that encroaches on suburban images of prosperity and peace also illustrates the new challenges in helping those now in need, as many services meant to address the problems of poverty are still concentrated in urban areas where the majority of the population once worked and lived.
Researchers at Brookings who have been looking at the changes in metropolitan areas found that while the unemployment rates between the cities and suburbs 20 years ago had been generally at least two percentage points apart, now they are within one percentage point.
"The first year of the recession was disproportionately hard on the suburbs," Miss Garr said.
The issue is most dramatically evident in the statistics of people who receive assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps.
First Published November 7, 2010 12:00 am
