Franklin County community leaders recently reviewed a report showing poverty is expanding beyond the county’s urban core and into the suburbs. The report showed 64 percent of Franklin County census areas experienced increases in unemployment and 29 percent showed increases of at least 25 percent. Read the Columbus Dispatch article.
Michael Wilkos of the Columbus Foundation told the Columbus Dispatch, “The past 10 years demonstrate some especially troubling indicators.”
The move of poverty from cities’ urban cores to the suburbs has become a nationwide trend with the poor population in America’s suburbs rising by more than half after 2000.
In October, the New York Times reported that nearly 60 percent of Cleveland’s poor, which was once concentrated in its urban core, now live in the suburbs – a 14 percent increase since 2000. Nationwide, the population of poor people in the suburbs increased from 49 percent to 55 percent.
Incomes have stagnated or fallen throughout Franklin County as well as the rest of the nation since 2000. According to the Wall Street Journal, after adjusting for inflation, the median income in the U.S. declined seven percent from 2000 to 2010.
The spread of poverty is forcing many communities across the country to consider how they help poor residents and serve their people.
