Report on the Social Service Challenges of Suburban Poverty By Scott Allard
Several recent trends have begun to upset this familiar
urban-suburban narrative about poverty and opportunity in
metropolitan America. In 1999, large U.S. cities and their
suburbs had roughly equal numbers of poor residents, but by 2008
the number of suburban poor exceeded the poor in central cities
by 1.5 million.
This report, co-authored with Benjamin Roth, published by the
Brookings Institution, examines data from the Census Bureau
and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), along with in-depth
interviews and a new survey of social services providers in
suburban communities surrounding Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA;
and Washington, D.C. to assess the challenges that rising
suburban poverty poses for local safety nets and community-based
organizations.
Scott W. Allard is a Professor at the Daniel J. Evans School of
Public Affairs at the University of Washington, and a Nonresident
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His presentation at
the Center for Poverty Research Poverty and Place conference is
“Places in Need: The Geography of Poverty and the American
Safety Net.”
