12 million suburbanites live in poverty

[donsu]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_re_us/suburban_poverty

-snip-

The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas released Thursday.

"Economies are regional now," said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty."

-snip-

America's suburbs are becoming more diverse, racially and economically. "There's poverty really everywhere in metropolitan areas because there are low-wage jobs everywhere," Berube said.

_Recent immigrants are increasingly bypassing cities and moving directly to suburbs, especially in the South and West. Those immigrants, on average, have lower incomes than people born in the United States.

-snip-

Cleveland was the city with the highest poverty rate last year, at 32.4 percent, while San Jose had the lowest, at 9.7 percent.

Suburban McAllen, Texas, at the southern tip of the state, was the suburb with the highest poverty rate last year, at 43.9 percent, while suburban Des Moines, Iowa, had the lowest, at 3.7 percent.
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[Deja Q]

1. I thought the economy was becoming globalized.

I'm also sorry for the immigrants, but those born here aren't paving their driveways with gold either...

[Jed Dilligan]

2. The crumbling older suburbs

I know them well.

The newly rich now move to "Sprinkler Cities," displacing the rural poor.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Problem with suburbs is there are limited jobs - you need car

transportation to get to your jobs. Lose the car, you lose the job. At least the urban poor have jobs in close proximity, usually, and established public transport (as spotty as it may be).

[Selatius]

5. That's a major problem with suburbs, dysfunctional mass transit

God knows how much a person spends each year on gas, maintenance, a car note, and car insurance when the person lives in a suburb built for cars and SUVs instead of people. Have you ever walked a very old city like Salem, Massachusetts, or any other city built before cars? Those are cities built for people. You could walk everywhere, and the corner grocery store was literally "on the corner." I used to go to school on the T-bus or the local market. It was a lot healthier than driving everywhere, and walking doesn't put carbon into the air like an SUV does.

[Selatius]

4. More and more people are being shoved into lower wage service sector jobs.

When you have jobs with low wages and few benefits, you end up with poverty as a result.

When you get laid off at GM, you go work at the Hyatt instead.