Fresno Poverty 2000

1
Where Will the Poor Live? Housing Policy and the
Location of Low-Income Households
Census 2000Lessons 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 gt 500,000
• All smaller metro areas gt 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 gt 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 90s
• 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 (Dgt.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

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Metro Population and Economic Expansion Track One
Another