U.S. Concentrated Poverty In The Wake Of The Great Recession

ELIZABETH KNEEBONE, NATALIE HOLMES - BROOKINGS INSTITUTE

31 March, 2016

The Great Recession may have ended in 2009, but despite the subsequent jobs rebound and declining unemployment rate, the number of people living below the federal poverty line in the United States remains stuck at recession-era record levels.

The rapid growth of the nation’s poor population during the 2000s also coincided with significant shifts in the geography of American poverty. Poverty spread beyond its historic urban and rural locales, rising rapidly in smaller metropolitan areas and making the nation’s suburbs home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Yet, even as poverty spread to touch more people and places, it became more concentrated in distressed and disadvantaged areas.

Continue reading this report from The Brookings Institute in its entirety below:

U.S. Concentrated Poverty In The Wake Of The Great Recession