Are the Spatial Concentrations of Core-City and Suburban Poverty Converging in the Rust Belt?

Abstract

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.