The Washington-based Brookings Institution released the study today entitled The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000’s.
The report looks at census data in 100 metropolitan areas across the country including Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro. Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Alan Berube said the Triad region experienced some of the sharpest increases in concentrated poverty because of a loss of manufacturing.
“In the cities of Greensboro and High Point, 20 percent of the poor population lives in a neighborhood where the poverty rate is at least 40 percent, so about one in 5
poor people in those cities lives in a very, very poor neighborhood. And we
know from research and experience that means poorer performing public schools,
higher levels of crime, poorer public health outcomes, less job access. All of
these things that converge to make it harder for those families to escape
poverty,” said Berube.
The Greensboro Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of Guilford, Randolph and
Rockingham Counties.
Nationally, Berube said extremely poor neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher has jumped since 2000. The report also said at least 2.2 million more Americans now live in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage than at the
start of the decade.
