Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Poverty Increases In Concentrated Areas

One less visible aspect of the economic boom of the 1990s was a decline in the number of low-income working people who lived in very poor neighborhoods.

But that trend has reversed during the first five years of this decade, according to a new analysis by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. It found that the number of poor people who live in areas of concentrated poverty increased by 41 percent since 1999.

"Many of these neighborhoods that made these great gains in the 1990s – with the downturn in the beginning of this decade and the weak recovery – have been hit hard by this economic change," says Elizabeth Kneebone, lead author of the report and a senior research analyst at Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. "We've lost a lot of ground and see poverty again increasing in these neighborhoods." - Christian Science Monitor

Trickle-down economics summed up: the rich get richer and the poor get...wait for it...richer. Did I let you down? We need trickle-down again. But really, in times like these how can one expect the poor to flock to the suburbs?

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