From MSNBC, Associated Press writer Hope Yen explores the spread of poverty in the US.
A pair of analyses by the nonprofit Brookings Institution paint a bleak economic picture for the 100 largest metropolitan areas over the past decade and in the coming years, when the U.S. poverty rate is projected to edge toward 15 percent.
They also come weeks before the Nov. 2 congressional elections in which voters anxious over the slumping economy will decide whether to keep Democrats in power. Made up of both cities and surrounding suburbs, the large metro areas represent two-thirds of the U.S. population and are home to key battlegrounds that helped lift Democrat Barack Obama to victory in 2008.
The analyses of census data released Thursday show that since 2000, the number of poor people in the suburbs jumped by 37.4 percent to 13.7 million. That's faster than the national growth rate of 26.5 percent and more than double the city rate of 16.7 percent.
After the recession began in 2007, the suburbs continued to post larger increases in the number of poor — adding 1.8 million, compared to 1.4 million in the cities. Suburbs are now home to roughly one-third of the nation's poor.
At the same time, social service providers are spread thin in many suburban areas, according to a detailed Brookings survey of groups in representative metropolitan areas of Chicago, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia. That has forced providers to turn away many poor people due to increasingly scarce government and private-sector aid that is typically given to cities first.
"Millions of Americans at all income levels moved to the suburbs looking for better schools, better jobs, affordable housing, and a sense of security, but in recent years, as incomes have fallen, people had a harder and harder time making ends meet," said Scott Allard, a University of Chicago professor who co-wrote one of the reports.