The suburbanization of poverty? An alternative perspective

AbstractA popular and powerful narrative focuses on a crisis of suburban decline in the United States. However, a consensus regarding the scope and scale of one dimension of suburban decline—poverty—is hindered by the use of contradictory definitions of suburban space. This research presents an alternative approach to measuring suburban poverty that is less computationally intensive yet capable of capturing complex shifts in the spatial distribution of poverty within metropolitan areas. An analysis of the distribution of poverty in the largest 100 metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2007–11 concludes that while poverty is increasing in the low-density suburbs of a handful of large metropolitan areas, the more general trend in most other metropolitan areas is an increase in poverty in moderately dense residential areas. Implicated in these trends are long-term trends in metropolitan area economic growth, a secular decline in inner-ring suburbs, and the impact of gentrification on housing opportunities for at-risk populations in large cities.Keywords: suburbspovertymethodsinner-ring suburbs