According to new research from the Brookings Institution, the concentration of poor people is particularly acute in several U.S. cities. The first point of the research is obvious. The portion of the population that lives below the poverty line has not changed much since the Great Recession. The number is roughly 15% of all Americans.
This concentration is particularly high in 30 cities.
Brookings comment about concentration by area:
The rapid growth of the nation’s poor population during the 2000s also coincided with significant shifts in the geography of American poverty. Poverty spread beyond its historic urban and rural locales, rising rapidly in smaller metropolitan areas and making the nation’s suburbs home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Yet, even as poverty spread to touch more people and places, it became more concentrated in distressed and disadvantaged areas.
A list of the cities with the highest levels of concentrated poverty levels:
