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The distribution of income is flattening in the United States, and an increasing number of the population is poor, despite general economic growth and rising median income. Most of the research on the plight of urban poor people relies on decennial census data and provides little information on recent developments. Further, studies at the national level provide few details about the living conditions of the poor in central cities. This analysis overcomes these limitations by focusing on one large city, Cleveland, Ohio, that was similar to many other northeast and north-central U.S. urban areas in 1980. The authors use data from administrative agencies and other local sources that are available yearly rather than at 10-year intervals. The analysis suggests that trends toward the geographic concentration of the poor observed in the 1970s have radically increased in the 1980s and that social and physical conditions in poor neighborhoods have been adversely affected.
Coulton et al. (Sat,) studied this question.