Larry Rosenthal, UC Berkeley

Census 2000:Lessons Learned

Where Will the Poor Live? Housing Policy and the Location of Low-Income Households

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

Still a Family Matter …

9.9%

5.7%

28.6%

13.6%

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

intact families married w/ochildren

female head male head

Percent in Poverty

… and an urban one.

Poor in

Central Cities

40.7%

Poor

Elsewhere

59.3%

Population Living Outside Central Cities

71.1%

Population Living in Central

Cities28.9%

REGION

West

Southw est

Southeast

South

Northw est

Northeast

Midw est

Me

dia

n

.18

.16

.14

.12

.10

.08

.06

.04

1990

2000

Median Poverty Rates - Suburbs

Median Poverty Rates - Cities

REGION

West

Southw est

Southeast

South

Northw est

Northeast

Midw est

Me

dia

n

.17

.16

.15

.14

.13

.12

.11

2000

1990

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?

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

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.

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.

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)

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)

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)

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

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

Metro Population and Economic Expansion Track One Another

1990-2000 Metropolitan Change

0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.00 20.00 40.00 60.00 80.00 100.00 120.00 140.00Job Growth

Population Growth