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The 15 US Cities Where Poverty Is Soaring Fastest
Southern poverty has grown in an extreme way within America's post-recession landscape, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.
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Of the 15 metro areas where poverty is expanding at the greatest rates, nine are located in the South, with four in North Carolina and another three in Florida.
Metro areas include cities and their surrounding suburbs, where poverty has been expanding fastest.
The Brookings report analyzes the poverty levels in metro areas, examining the change between 2000 and the period of 2008-2012, which includes an average from a five-year Census estimate and shows the effect of the recession.
Business Insider previously looked at the Brookings report to see which U.S. cities had rapidly expanding poor neighborhoods. This analysis looks at the metro areas that saw the biggest overall increases in poverty. To do so, we ranked metro areas based on the change in poor population from 2000 through the 2008-2012 average.
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For the year 2013, the Census set the poverty level at $12,119 for a single person under the age of 65 and $24,028 for a family of four.
77% growth in poor population
50,921 — Poor population in 2000
90,285 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Sarasota County, home of North Port, has experienced a major spike in poverty since the start of the recession, particularly for those under 18, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported in 2011, citing its own analysis of Census data. That analysis found the poverty rate jumped to 13.1% from 8.1% between 2007 and 2010.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
77% growth in poor population
65,798 — Poor population in 2000
116,501 — Poor population average from 2008-2012
The percentage of poor people living in Greensboro — home of several universities including Guilford College and a branch of the University of North Carolina — is nearly 19%, higher than both the state and overall U.S. level.
The city and its surrounding areas are part of the 12th Congressional district, which saw the nation’s biggest increase in suburban poor people between 2000 and 2011, according to a previous Brookings Institution report that the Raleigh News & Record reported on last year.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
81% growth in poor population
169,317 — Poor population in 2000
307,240 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Orlando — a city many associate with the "happiest place on earth," Disney World — has more than 18% of its residents living below the poverty level compared with 15.6% for the state. In 2011, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found the number of kids in Orlando living in poverty had spiked 50% since before the recession.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
82% growth in poor population
57,091 — Poor population in 2000
103,730 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
With 22% of its residents living below the poverty level, the Forsyth County seat Winston-Salem is one of many North Carolina cities struggling with poverty. A local news report attributed the high poverty in Forsyth to a large wealth gap in the county.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
82% growth in poor population
126,375 — Poor population in 2000
230,437 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Austin, home to the University of Texas, has had particularly high growth in suburban poverty. Over the past decade, Austin had the second-largest increase in suburban poverty among big cities, KUT.org reported last year, citing a separate Brookings Institution report.
The U.S. Census also reports that Austin has a homeownership rate roughly 20% below the rate for all of Texas.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
82% growth in poor population
138,400 — Poor population in 2000
251,428 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
One in five residents in the Indianapolis metro area lives in poverty, ABC Indianapolis reported last year, citing a report released by Polis Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. That report found that Hispanics in the city experienced a higher poverty rate than did any other group.
The most recent Census data shows nearly 20% of the city's residents live in poverty, compared with nearly 15% for the entire state.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
84% growth in poor population
30,179 — Poor population in 2000
55,597 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Home to Brigham Young University, Provo has a poverty rate roughly 20% higher than that of the rest of Utah, with more than 30% of its residents living below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Census. Provo also has a median household income nearly $18,000 lower than in the rest of the state.
On average between 2008-2012, the Census also found that the homeownership rate was more than 25% lower in Provo in comparison with the rest of Utah. To be sure, Brigham Young's high population of college students might make Provo look especially poor.
However, some college towns have far fewer residents living in poverty than Provo. Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, has 21% of its residents living in poverty, while Columbus, Ohio, home of Ohio State, has 22% of its residents living in poverty.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
88% growth in poor population
40,916 — Poor population in 2000
76,720 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
In 2010, The Colorado Springs Gazette reported on Census data finding that impoverished areas were growing in El Paso County, Colorado, where Colorado Springs is located. Virtually the entire southeast portion of the city consisted of areas where 20% or more of residents lived below the poverty line, The Gazette reported.
Poverty is a statewide problem. Last year, a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that Colorado had the second-fastest rate of child poverty in America, The Denver Post reported.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
89% growth in poor population
71,165 — Poor population in 2000
134,669 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Grand Rapids — a center for furniture manufacturing known as “furniture city” — has an unbelievably high number of people living in poverty, 26.8%, compared with Michigan’s 16.3%.
MLive.com reported last year that poverty in Grand Rapids and its suburbs was soaring.
“Structural unemployment has hit Michigan worse than other places,” Grand Valley State University economist Paul Isley told MLive.com. “Some relatively decent, well-paying jobs that didn’t require a lot of skills existed in Michigan at the beginning of the 2000s. What we saw (through the recessions) was those types of jobs disappear. That results in a pretty quick jump in poverty for us. All of that in Grand Rapids bleeds out into the suburbs.”
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
89% growth in poor population
145,822 — Poor population in 2000
274,980 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
After years of unrivaled expansion, Las Vegas was arguably hit harder by the housing collapse than any other American city, with property prices dropping anywhere from 50% to 60%, the Guardian reported in October 2011.
Vegas suburbs were hit even worse, with a 139.3% poverty increase between 2000 and 2011, according to a separate Brookings report that KLAS-TV Las Vegas reported on last year.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
90% growth in poor population
396,168 — Poor population in 2000
752,152 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Atlanta is known as the "capital of the new South" and viewed as an economic engine for the Southeast. However, the poverty rate in the city is shockingly high, with more than 24% of the people there living below the poverty line.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
97% growth in poor population
66,177 — Poor population in 2000
130,242 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Raleigh, along with Durham and Chapel Hill, is part of the so-called "Research Triangle" that is a major technology hub in the Southeast. Still, more than 16% of the city's residents live in poverty, and the Brookings Institution report shows its poor population has increased dramatically.
Indeed, UNC Law School professor Gene Nichol has written in the News & Observer that "much of North Carolina’s most intense poverty, we’ll see, is found in the center cities of Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem."
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
97% growth in poor population
159,209 — Poor population in 2000
314,345 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
Charlotte is a major banking center and hub for U.S. Airways. However, the recession pushed many people in North Carolina deeper into poverty, according to a 2011 report from the North Carolina Budget & Tax Center.
In 2012, a community agency serving low-income people called the Charlotte Area Fund told the Charlotte Post it had served three times as many people as it had planned on serving in 2010-2011.
“The face of suburbia has changed as the face of poverty has changed. We’ve restructured ourselves to meet the need, are calling upon other agencies that serve the same population,” Karen Browning, executive director of the Charlotte Area Fund, told that paper.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
108% growth in poor population
42,434 — Poor population in 2000
88,463 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
While Marketplace reported last year that in Boise “the local economy has a pulse once more,” the mortgage crisis had a severe impact on Idaho. Even after U.S. the recession officially ended in 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the housing crisis was worsening in places in the Midwest like Boise, Idaho.
Meanwhile, Boise had thousands of layoffs at Micron Technology and the grocery store Albertson’s, Bloomberg pointed out.
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
110% growth in poor population
42,315 — Poor population in 2000
88,946 — Average poor population from 2008-2012
The poverty rate in Cape Coral proper is not particularly high. However, poverty in that city's suburbs jumped to 18.6% from 11.3% between 2007 and 2010, according to a previous Brookings Institution report cited by The Huffington Post.
The real state downturn pummeled the area around that same period; in 2008 The Economist called Cape Coral "ground-zero of the housing market collapse."
Based on a Brookings report comparing 2008–2012 to 2000.
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