page_title: Concentrated poverty
section_title: 1970 - 1990
hierarchical_section_title: Concentrated poverty / Regional examples / American trends / 1970 - 1990
caption_attribution_description: English: View of one of the Robert F. Wagner public housing buildings in East Harlem, New York City.
context_page_description: Concentrated poverty concerns the spatial distribution of socio-economic deprivation, specifically focusing on the density of poor populations. Within the United States, common usage of the term concentrated poverty is observed in the fields of policy and scholarship referencing areas of "extreme" or "high-poverty." These are defined by the US census as areas where "40 percent of the tract population [lives] below the federal poverty threshold." A large body of literature argues that areas of concentrated poverty place additional burdens on poor families residing within them, burdens beyond what these families' individual circumstances would dictate. Research also indicates that areas of concentrated poverty can have effects beyond the neighborhood in question, affecting surrounding neighborhoods not classified as "high-poverty" and subsequently limiting their overall economic potential and social cohesion. Concentrated poverty is a global phenomenon, with prominent examples world-wide. Despite differing definitions, contributing factors, and overall effects, global concentrated poverty retains its central theme of spatial density.
context_section_description: The number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods - where the poverty rate was 40% or higher - doubled between 1970 and 1990. It was not until after the release of the 1980 census, however, that trends of poverty concentration were systematically studied, as the 1970 census was the first instance where the 40% measure was employed. Studying these trends, sociologist William Julius Wilson made the following discoveries regarding the decade of the 1970s:
  Poverty increased dramatically throughout metropolitan areas of the United States.
  The number of poor people residing within poor metropolitan areas increased
  The exacerbation of poverty conditions primarily occurred within African-American neighborhoods.
  Several other scholars later affirmed a dramatic increase in the number of neighborhoods classified as areas of concentrated poverty in the 1970s. The increase of neighborhoods classified as areas of "extreme poverty" continued into the 1980s, albeit to a lesser extent. The same trends of concentrated poverty observed at the census tract and neighborhood levels were similarly observed at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level. Both decades between 1970-1990 saw a increased difference in poverty rates between central cities and their suburbs, reflecting an increasing spatial concentration of MSA poverty within central cities. The changing spatial distribution of poverty has been attributed to the following:
  Changes in the labor market due to deindustrialization, leading to a widening wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers and spatial mismatches between the types of jobs offered in cities and the type of workers residing within them.
  Declining economic growth (several studies, however, demonstrate a weak or non-existent link between poverty reduction and urban economic growth in neighborhoods with extreme poverty).
  Relocation of upper- and middle- income residents from cities to suburbs, alongside demographic changes such as the rise in one-parent households and a decrease in labor market participation.
  Such changes were intertwined with America's history of ethno-racial segregation. Some of its effects include white flight from American cities, leading to a declining tax base to provide city services, and the civil rights movement, allowing better-off blacks to leave inner-city areas. While concentrated poverty between 1970-1990 increased among blacks, Hispanics, and whites, the most dramatic increases were observed among blacks, followed by Hispanics, and to a much lesser extent whites.
caption: Robert F. Wagner public housing in East Harlem, New York City.
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