Cities Hit Hardest by Extreme Poverty

In Syracuse, New York, 23.2% of the more than 95,000 people living in poverty are also living in largely poor neighborhoods. The metro area’s poor black and Hispanic populations are far more likely to live in poor neighborhoods than Syracuse’s poor white population. The extreme poverty rate among the metro area’s Hispanic population is 40.9%, among the black population it is 34.4%, and among the white population 14.6%.

Upward mobility is limited in poor neighborhoods. Across Syracuse’s poorest neighborhoods, the unemployment rate stands at 16.9%, nearly triple the 5.9% unemployment rate across the rest of the metro area.

Milwaukee’s 14.5% poverty rate is closely aligned with the 14.6% national poverty rate. However, a larger than typical share of Milwaukee’s poorest residents face the additional challenges of living in a highly poor neighborhood. Of the 224,000 people living in poverty in Milwaukee, 23.5% live in high-poverty neighborhoods — more than double the nationwide concentrated poverty rate of 11.3%.

Crime tends to be concentrated in poorer neighborhoods, and the high concentrated poverty rate in Milwaukee may be driving up the violent crime rate across the broader metro area. There were 681 violent crimes in Milwaukee for ever 100,000 residents in 2017, compared to the national violent crime rate of 383 per 100,000.

Springfield is the only metro area in Massachusetts and the broader New England region to rank on this list, and it is one of only 10 metro areas nationwide where more than one-in-four people living below the poverty line also live in an extremely poor neighborhood. Homeownership is one of the most practical ways to build intergenerational wealth, and across Springfield’s poorest neighborhoods, the homeownership rate is just 16.1% — a fraction of the homeownership rate across the rest of the metro area of 66.4%.

As is often the case in U.S. cities, concentrated poverty is more common among Springfield’s minority population. Across the metro area, 43.6% of poor Hispanics live in poor neighborhoods and 21.1% of poor black residents do, compared to just 9.0% of poor white residents.

In the last five years, the concentrated poverty rate in Jackson, Mississippi, increased by 2.4 percentage points — from 23.8% to 26.2%. The increase is partially attributable to a growing number of city residents living below the poverty line. More than 103,000 Jackson metro area residents live in poverty, up from 93,000 in 2011. Over the same period, the number of metro area neighborhoods where at least 40% of the population lives in poverty increased from 18 to 21.

Economic opportunity tends to be limited in poor urban neighborhoods. In Jackson’s poorest neighborhoods, the unemployment rate stands at 18.2%, nearly triple the 6.8% unemployment rate in the rest of the metro area.

Concentrated poverty is a growing problem in the Buffalo metro area. The share of poor metro area residents living in poor neighborhoods climbed from 20.2% in 2011 to 26.2% in 2017. The 5.9 percentage point increase in concentrated poverty was the largest of any U.S. metro area over that period. For reference, the national concentrated poverty rate fell by 1.6 percentage points between 2011 and 2017. The increase in Buffalo was precipitated in part by a growing number of residents living below the poverty line. In 2011, 153,800 metro area residents lived in poverty. As of 2017, 161,700 did.