Poverty Hits the Suburbs

While the development reported in today's New York Times, that wages are finally beginning to outpace prices, is encouraging, a far more troubling report has come out suggesting that poverty is not exclusively an urban problem, but a national one.

As Americans flee the cities for the suburbs, many are failing to leave poverty behind.

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."

The poverty rate in large cities is still twice the rate of that in the suburbs (18.8% in cities, a number that should anger people, compared to 9.4% in suburbs), so population expansion is the proximate cause here. But as low-wage jobs multiply across the national landscape, more suburbanites are experiencing poverty. The extreme examples are shocking. Suburban McAllen, Texas, has a whooping 43% poverty rate.

The reason I find this crucial is because suburbs aren't nearly as equipped to handle the very poor. They usually don't have the same kind of public transportation options for those who cannot afford their own cars. The infrastructure for social services is generally concentrated in metropolitan centers rather than on the periphery. Emergency room and medical clinics are more spread out and potentially unreachable. Food banks aren't always available. I would guess that if those living in surburban poverty have a car, they're not paying insurance on it, making the whole area more hazardous should an accident occur.

Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said many of the same social and economic problems that have plagued cities for years are now affecting suburbs: struggling schools, rising crime and low-paying jobs.

"I call it the urbanization of the suburbs," Morial said.

"I hope this says to people that the way to confront poverty is not to wall it off and concentrate it," Morial said. "You really need policies to eliminate it."

Not surprisingly, the rise is poverty is most deeply felt in the Midwest, particularly in Michigan and Ohio.

The current wage increases for below-management level personnel aren't reflected in these statistics, of course, and the tight labor market is a factor in wage increases, but we cannot say for sure if this will be sustained or not. In addition, the one low-wage worker cited in the Times article received her pay raise as part of the SEIU Houston janitor battle. Indeed, it's LABOR that has been pushing for these increases in wages rather than the mysteriously glorious free market. I'm very encouraged that labor will be pushing for the Employee Free Choice Act as a signature piece of legislation in the first 100 hours of a Democratic Congress. It simply makes sense that workers who sign cards asserting their right to organize should give them union status, rather than the convoluted and deliberately slow secret-ballot proposal that is current law.

Still, we have a major problem with the expansion of poverty beyond the conventionally expected "borders" of urban areas. Suburbs simply aren't as equipped to deal with it. And this Congress needs to provide a voice for the voiceless and take the necessary steps to fight poverty everywhere, and ensure that every locality has the proper resources to take up that fight.