finance.yahoo.com/news/Poverty-pervades-the-cnnm-893289229.html
cnnmoney Tami Luhby, On Friday September 23, 2011, 5:57 pm EDT Guess where most people in poverty live? And their ranks are swelling fast, as jobs disappear and incomes decline amid the continued weak economy. Since 2000, the number of suburban poor has skyrocketed by 53%, battered by the two recessions that wiped out many manufacturing jobs early on, and low-wage construction and retail positions more recently. The remaining 18 million poor folks in the US are roughly split between smaller metro areas and rural communities. "We think of poverty as a really urban or ultra-rural phenomenon, but it's not," said Elizabeth Kneebone, senior research associate at Brookings. Suburbia's population has boomed among all classes in recent decades as job growth shifted from central cities to their outskirts. Low-wage workers were needed to service this burgeoning number of residents and companies. Suburbia became home to the greatest concentration of impoverished residents by 2005, Kneebone said. That stemmed in part from the collapse of the manufacturing industry based outside Midwestern cities. The loss of those jobs contributed to pushing many into poverty.
The downturn also shifted where in suburbia poverty was intensifying. Many low-income people had moved there during the boom to make money building and caring for homes or working in the retailers and restaurants that cropped up to service the new residents. To be sure, there were many suburbanites entrenched in poverty even before 2000. Nearly 10 million people fell below the poverty line at the start of the last decade. They were then joined by new immigrants, who increasingly skipped the cities and moved directly to their outskirts in search of plentiful, but low-wage, construction or service jobs. The foreign born accounted for about 17% of the increase in the suburban poor between 2000 and 2009, according to a Brookings report. Also, as wages eroded over the past decade, some people living on the edge found themselves pushed into poverty. For 2010, the poverty line stood at $22,314 a year for a family of four. "If they are working minimum-wage jobs and see their wages decline or stagnate, they may now see themselves below the poverty line," Kneebone said. And, of course, there is a whole new set of impoverished suburbanites: the formerly middle class who lost their jobs. These folks may have been living the American dream -- with the house, car and white-picket fence -- but then saw it disappear in the Great Recession.
Faces of poverty The Community Action Partnership of Suburban Hennepin has seen a crush of middle-class residents walk through its doors after losing their jobs, said Marcy Harris, planning and development director at the agency, which is outside Minneapolis. "We saw people who never thought they would use a food bank.
services that can aid them because many of these areas aren't equipped to handle the growing numbers, especially amid government budget cuts. "It can be difficult to find help in many suburban communities," said Scott Allard, associate professor at the University of Chicago who has studied the issue. "Providers are overwhelmed with demand or there are not that many providers to begin with." Nearly three-quarters of suburban non-profit agencies said they are seeing more clients who had never accessed aid, according to a report Allard published last year. A growing number of requests were for help with food or housing. Many agencies told Allard they had to put newcomers on waiting lists or refer them to other organizations. But these groups are often far apart and difficult to access, especially for those without cars. Also, many suburban poor don't know where to turn when they are in dire straits. Or they fear the stigma of having to ask for government assistance, not wanting to let their neighbors know they're in trouble. "By and large, if you drive through the suburbs, it looks like the American dream is still healthy and real," said Donna Cooper, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy group. "But behind closed doors, there are increasing numbers of people who don't have jobs, their retirement nest eggs are gone and they can't meet their mortgage payments." Since poverty in the suburbs still remains largely hidden, it can be hard for charitable organizations located there to raise money. Kneebone recently visited an affluent suburb of Denver, where the poverty rate has doubled in the last decade. The social service agencies there told her they were having a tough time getting area residents to understand the extent of the problem. "People still donate to organizations in the city," she said. "They don't realize that right in their own neighborhoods, there is need."
Report Abuse Not sure I have a whole lot of faith, at the moment, in anyone in our goverment presenting any solid solutions to our current economic problems, or what seems to me the obvious future world trends, that most likely will create even more problems for our economy in the future. I believe that a future resource comsuption shift could possibly be the the nail in the coffin for our economy. If China, or another other developing country, gets to the point of cosuming the the amount of resources that we currently due in the United States, it will be an all out bidding war for resources that could push inflation to levels we have never seen before in our country. I , as an ordinary citizen, will admit that I have no grand ideas on what we should do to ensure our country's economic stability now and into the future. I do read and listen to a lot of ideas proposed by the citizens of our country. There seems to be no consensus of what path we should take. Maybe this is because there is no manual to follow showing us what we should do and that trial and error is the reality of life. As any prospectus states, "Past performance does not guarantee future results". I hope we can come together as a nation with some solid ideas to address the challenges we face in a global economy, An economy that we have no choice but to compete with, especially when it comes to natural resources. As an active military memeber with 22 years of service who has traveled the world extensively, the world admires our quality of life and there are countries working hard to acheive the same for themselves.
Report Abuse America now has 17 going on 20 Free Trade Agreements with various countries around the world, most of which are poor Third World countries. And, these Free Trade Agreements are sucking the life out of America's economy by creating an environment which makes it highly profitable for American corporations to move their operations overseas to countries like Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, and Singapore to mention a few. To make matters worst and to accelerate the migration of American jobs to other countries, Congress has created a corporate tax code with a loophole that allows American corporations to pay no taxes on corporate earnings when they relocate overseas. This loophole allows a 35% tax to remain unpaid by American corporations. Typically, American employees are terminated and disposed of for the relocation, and those employees end up on unemployment. China and India are getting millions of American jobs while the US tax payer gets the bill for massive trade deficits and high unemployment. It is the biggest most single national security threat to this nation.
Report Abuse Most people know someone in poverty these days. The snide comments about the 'poor' owning TV sets and phones are indefensible. Someday the same people will find themselves on the streets and know what it feels like!
Report Abuse Please would everyone write or call Obama and the majority of Republicans tell them not to sign the pending Free Trade Agreements with SKorea, Columbia, and Panama. These supposed free trade pacts have destroyed millions of our jobs and it will only get worse. I believe the people of Mexico would be happy with rewriting it. NAFTA has destroyed their farming with our cheap government subsidized agricultural products. This the area the Mexic...
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