Surburban Poverty Now Greater Than Poverty In Inner Cities

Between 2000 and 2008, the number of poor people living in America rose by 15.4 percent -- nearly twice the growth rate in the overall population in the same period.

The poverty rate in American suburbs increased 25 percent during that period -- and is growing significantly faster than the national average and urban rate. Due in large part to suburban population growth and the housing slump, the suburbs now contain the nation's biggest and fastest-growing poor population.

The Brookings Institution published a report showing that from Las Vegas to Boise to Houston, suburban poverty has been growing steadily.

"The enduring social and fiscal challenges for cities that stem from high poverty are increasingly shared by their suburbs," the report concludes. It's a problem some may assume is confined to the ragged fringes of so-called "inner ring" suburbs that directly border cities, places where the housing stock is older and from which many wealthier residents long ago departed. But this isn't the case. "Overall...first suburbs did not bear the brunt of increasing suburban poverty in the early 2000s," notes the Brookings report, which found that economic distress has spread to "second-tier suburbs and 'exurbs'" as well.

The result is a historic milestone that has gone strangely ignored: For the first time ever, more poor Americans live in the suburbs than in all our cities combined. - Read Report