Tip of the hat to KJP for turning me on to this Brookings study.

 

Brookings has been measuring the increase and distribution of poverty in metro areas and is reporting that poverty has been moving to the suburbs during the 2000s.  They report for 2000-2008. 

 

Urban Ohio is in the US top 10 in this league.  Big Seven box scores:

 

Primary City rankings and poverty rates:

 

#2, Youngstown, 33.5%

#4,  Cleveland, 30.%

#8  Dayton, 29.2%

 

Top 10 increase in primary city poverty rates, 2000 to 2008:

 

#2, Youngstown,  8.7% increase

#4, Toledo, 6.8% increase

#5, Dayton, 6.2%

#7, Columbus, 5.3%

#8 Akron, 5.1%

 

Top 10 increase in suburban poverty rates. 2000 to 2008

 

#2, Youngstown, 4.1% increase

#8, Cleveland, 2.7% increase

#10, Dayton, 2.5% increase

 

Signfigant change in suburban poor as a share of all poor from 2000 to 2008:

 

#2, Cleveland;  45.9% to 55.2%, 9.1% shift to suburbs

#9. Cincinnati:  62.7% to 70.2%, 7.6% shift to the suburbs

 

Brookings also forecasts a metro poverty rate increase based on recent economic trends:

 

Youngstown; 3.6% increase

Toledo:  3.3% increase

Dayton:  2.8% increase

Akron:  2.2% increase

Cincinnati: 2.1% increase

Columbus:  1.8% increase

Cleveland:  1.5% increase (so maybe Cleveland is bottoming out)

 

Poverty vs Lower Income

 

The Brookings study aknowleges that the official poverty rate is probably set too low, and that other research indicates that the real subsistence living income is actually higher than the official rate, some say 150% higher, others say 200% higher.  For a family of four I think the 200% rate would be around $40K, which is sometimes considered the “living wage income” (maybe a bit higher than that).

 

Brookings provides info on the number of individuals at this 200% number for cities and suburbs, and percentages for both, but this isn’t that useful due to the nature of annexation and if cities take in more prosperous suburban areas (and city-county mergers really throw the numbers).

 

So I added the 2008 city and suburb “lower income” numbers provided by Brookings and derived a percentage based on the census 2008 estimates for MSA.  Here is the ranking of Urban Ohio by % of metro population making 200% of the poverty level:

 

1. Youngstown, 34%

2. Toledo. 31.5%

3. Cleveland, 29%

4. Dayton, 28.6%

5. Akron. 28.3%

6. Columbus, 26.7%

7. Cincinnati, 25.3%

 

For concentrations of low income individuals in the core cities, the top (over 50% of city residents) are:

 

Youngstown, 58.3%

Cleveland, 56.4%

Dayton, 51.7%

 

For suburban low income, as a % of suburban residents metro-wide:

 

Youngstown: 32%

Dayton:  25.3%

Cleveland: 23.1%

Cincinnati: 23%

Akron: 21.6%

Toledo: 20.9%

Columbus: 20.1%

 

So one can see Dayton ranking up there for both city and suburban low income people. Just a poor place. And you can sense that driving around Dayton, the low level of economic activity, the frown of poverty.    But Youngstown seems really hardscrabble based on these stats.

 

You can read it all for yourselves:

 

The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008

 

C-Dawg, are you noticing evidence of declining incomes...like store and food/drink place closings, etc....

Honestly you should look at rural counties and see how they rank.

I would bet that actually Cincinnati's exurban numbers will crash hard when this is brought to the end of the decade - two massive employers for suburban/rural areas closed - Ford Batavia and DHL Wilmington.

 

As to Toledo, I came through there on Monday after a trip to NAIAS - Detroit is a ghost town. Toledo at least has traffic and quite a bit it seemed. I did notice that a couple of the nice neighborhoods around UT's campus were looking a little worse for wear - Old Orchard and Westmoreland. There must be some money floating around as the St. Francis campus is looking pretty spiffy.

 

I don't disagree that a manufacturing city is a tough road to hoe, but traditional stimulus spending will help Toledo more than other places. I also think that the agricultural region around Toledo can only become more valuable in the future considering its singular fertility. This may help mitigate some of the downward pressure on retail at least in the city. 

Other random comment on Toledo, it seemed that the Mexican community has really settled in. I noticed a lot more authentic Mexican restaurants and bodegas around town than 10 years ago. I'd consider that a general positive for the city's future.

Cleveland's poverty is second among big cities; gap between rich and poor grows nationally

 

Published: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 10:47 AM    Updated: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 3:16 PM

Rich Exner, The Plain Dealer

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One out of every three Clevelanders lives in poverty -- making the city one of the poorest big cities in the country -- according to new estimates released today by the Census Bureau.

 

The 2009 poverty rate for Cleveland was estimated at 35 percent, up from 30.5 percent in 2008.  That ranks Cleveland second in the country behind Detroit (36.4 percent) among major cities and 12th nationally among places of at least 65,000 people.  Estimates were not made available for smaller places...

 

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2010/09/clevelands_poverty_is_second_a.html

---

 

POVERTY RATES FOR OHIO CITIES >65,000 POPULATION (2005-2009)

 

City Name - 2009 Rate (2005 Rate)

 

Youngstown 35.7 percent (24.3%)

Cleveland 35 percent (32.4%)

Lorain 33.7 percent (17.6%)!!!

Dayton 30.9 percent (28.9%)

Canton 30.5 percent (27.4%)

Cincinnati 25.7 percent (25.0%)

Akron 24.6 percent (20.1%)

Toledo 23.8 percent (23.4%)

Columbus 22.6 percent (18.7%)

Parma 8.8 percent (6.5%)

 

Source: American Community Survey at census.gov

 

I'm suspicious of those Lorain numbers from 2005 - while Lorain has gotten poorer in the last 5 years, there's no way that it had lower poverty rates than Columbus or any other major industrial city in Ohio in 2005.  The downward slide has been occurring for decades, not years.

 

    As for the urban / suburban / rural split, I would offer this:

 

  Prior to WWII, there wasn't so much suburban sprawl, and cities reached their peak populations. Obviously, the suburban sprawl happened at the expense of the city, and city populations declined. Much has been written about this.

 

    Not as much has been written about the exodus from rural areas to suburban ones. Just as populations shifted from cities to suburbs, populations also shifted from rural areas to suburbs.

 

    The increase / decrease numbers above can reflect two things. One, they can reflect families getting poorer. Two, they can reflect poor families moving in.

 

    There seems to be some evidence that the "brain drain" to New York, Chicago, Seattle, etc., is offset somewhat by folks from Adams and Meigs county relocating to Cincinnati and Columbus. I'm not so sure about Cleveland and Toledo.

Here is one study that basically took into account the cost of living for city and metro areas and determined which ones were truly the poor areas. The only Ohio city to be listed in the top 50 was Lima at 42.

 

They claim that a 45-year-old federal methodology for determining poverty is too simplistic, and potentially inaccurate.

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-23/recession-the-50-cities-feeling-the-economic-squeeze/