  Decades of deindustrialization have led to economic decline and population
loss throughout the U.S. Midwest, with the highest national poverty rates found
in Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. This poverty is often confined to core
cities themselves, however, as many of their surrounding suburbs continue to
prosper. Poverty can therefore be highly concentrated at the MSA level, but
more evenly distributed within the borders of the city proper. One result of
this disparity is that if suburbanites consider poverty to be confined to the
central city, they might be less willing to devote resources to alleviate it.
But due to recent increases in suburban poverty, particularly since the 2008
recession, such urban-suburban gaps might be shrinking. Using Census
tract-level data, this study quantifies poverty concentrations for four "Rust
Belt" MSAs, comparing core-city and suburban concentrations in 2000, 2010, and
2015. There is evidence of a large gap between core cities and outlying areas,
which is closing in the three highest-poverty cities, but not in Milwaukee. A
set of four comparison cities show a smaller, more stable city-suburban divide
in the U.S. "Sunbelt," while Chicago resembles a "Rust Belt" metro.
