Ferguson Unrest Shows Poverty Grows Fastest in Suburbs

[Purveyor]

A week of violence and protests in a town outside St. Louis is highlighting how poverty is growing most quickly on the outskirts of America’s cities, as suburbs have become home to a majority of the nation’s poor.

In Ferguson, Missouri, a community of 21,000 where the poverty rate doubled since 2000, the dynamic has bred animosity over racial segregation and economic inequality. Protests over the police killing of an unarmed black teenager on Aug. 9 have drawn international attention to the St. Louis suburb’s growing underclass.

Such challenges aren’t unique to Ferguson, according to a Brookings Institution report July 31 that found the poor population growing twice as fast in U.S. suburbs as in city centers. From Miami to Denver, resurgent downtowns have blossomed even as their recession-weary outskirts struggle with soaring poverty in what amounts to a paradigm shift.

“We’ve passed this tipping point and there are now more poor people in the suburbs than the cities,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, author of the report and a fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program in Washington. “In those communities, we see things like poorer health outcomes, failing schools and higher crime rates.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-16/ferguson-unrest-shows-poverty-grows-fastest-in-suburbs.html