The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s

From the Brookings Institution, this report includes an analysis of data on neighborhood poverty from the 2005–2009 American Community Surveys and Census 2000. The data reveals that after declining in the 1990s, the population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods rose by one-third from 2000 to 2005–2009. Additionally, concentrated poverty doubled in Midwest metropolitan areas and rose by one-third in the South’s metropolitan areas. Authors speculate that this rise in poverty from the recession will further increase the concentration of poor individuals in extreme poverty neighborhoods.