Post on 17-Aug-2020
CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN NEW YORK CITY AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGING GEOGRAPHIC PATTERNS OF POVERTY
CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN APRIL 2012
The most recent recession has had a devastating impact on some of New York City’s most vulnerable populations. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, since 2008 the number of people living below the federal poverty level in New York City grew by more than 120,000, to over 1.6 million in 2010. Also in 2010, one in three of the City’s children lived in poverty up from one in four just two years prior. For many of New York City’s poor, the daily struggle to meet their basic needs is compounded by living in overwhelmingly poor neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, communal resources are scarce and residents often face other significant obstacles to prosperity, such as a dearth of employment and educational opportunities, high crime rates, and poor housing quality. To better understand the scale and impact of this issue, Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, Inc. (CCC) conducted an analysis of New York City neighborhood-level poverty data. Our findings, detailed below, suggest that despite a decline in the number of extreme-poverty neighborhoods and the share of people who live in them, concentrated poverty continues to be a serious problem for many communities.1 It is well-documented that for the residents of very poor neighborhoods, the burdens of individual poverty are amplified. The obstacles they face may include high crime rates, poor health outcomes, reduced private investments, limited educational and job opportunities, and poor housing conditions.2 CCC recognizes the cumulative effect of such risk factors on the lives of children in the “community risk rankings” found in our Keeping Track of New York City’s Children publication.3 DEFINITIONS Extreme-poverty neighborhoods are defined as neighborhoods with more than 40 percent of the population living below the federal poverty level and are measured geographically using the Census tract.
Concentrated poverty refers to the prevalence of poor people4 living in “extreme-poverty” neighborhoods.
The concentrated poverty rate measures the share of poor people within a specified geographic area who live in these extreme-poverty neighborhoods. Citywide, concentrated poverty has declined in the past decade, but a large number of New Yorkers still lives in extreme poverty. The share of poor people living in extreme poverty neighborhoods in New York City declined from 25.9 percent in 2000 to 19.6 percent for the 2006 to 2010 period, a reduction of 24.1 percent. For children, gains were not quite as great; the share of poor children in concentrated poverty areas dropped 20.9 percent, from 31.9 percent to 25.2 percent during the same time period. These declines in the concentrated poverty rates may optimistically suggest that anti-poverty campaigns have had some successes in fighting poverty in the City’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, but this conclusion should be cautiously drawn as the problems of poverty and concentrated poverty do persist in New York City. Citywide, more than 298,000 poor people, including about 124,000 poor children, live in extreme poverty neighborhoods. Overall, one in every ten children in New York City lives in a neighborhood where the poverty rate exceeds 40 percent. 1 This analysis was modeled after a Brookings Institute policy brief: Elizabeth Kneebone, Carey Nadeau, and Alan Berube, The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s, The Brookings Institute: November 2011. (https://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1103_poverty_kneebone_nadeau_berube.aspx) 2 See Kneebone et al, p. 2 for a fuller discussion of these and other obstacles related to concentrated poverty, as well as citations to scholarly literature. 3 See Citizens’ Committee for Children, Keeping Track of New York City’s Children, 2010, pp. 30-32 (or online at http://www.cccnewyork.org/aboutkt.html) for more on Community District risk rankings. 4 The term “poor people” refers to individuals with incomes below the federal poverty level (FPL), as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2010 the average FPL for a family of four was $22,314. See http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/methods/definitions.html for more information on Census poverty definitions and thresholds.
CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN NEW YORK CITY
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York 2
Concentrated poverty continues to be a serious problem for many New York City neighborhoods. While the citywide concentrated poverty rate has declined, improvements have not been experienced consistently across the City’s neighborhoods. Indeed, in eight communities, the concentrated poverty rates rose between 2000 and the 2006-2010 period by at least two percentage points. (See Figure 1.) For example, in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (labeled 303 on Figure 1), the concentrated poverty rate rose from 38.0 percent in 2000 to 43.2 percent in 2006-2010. According to the most recent data, nearly one-third (29.0 percent) of Bedford Stuyvesant’s total population lived in extreme poverty areas, where more than half of the residents earned less than the federal
CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN NEW YORK CITY
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York 3
poverty level (about $22,000 for a family of four in 2010). More than half (54.1 percent) of poor children and 42.2 percent of all children lived in these extreme poverty areas within this community. Alternatively, for neighborhoods where the concentrated poverty rates have fallen, the most recent data are in many cases even more troubling. For example, in the South Bronx neighborhoods of Mott Haven and Hunts Point (labeled 201/202 on Figure 1), the concentrated poverty rate fell 4.4 percentage points between 2000 and 2006-2010, but that was from a starting point of 78.6 percent. Over two-thirds (67.3 percent) of all residents and almost three-quarters (72.5 percent) of all children in these communities lived in areas of extreme poverty in 2006-2010.
In fact, while most communities in the Bronx saw their concentrated poverty rates decline between 2000 and 2006-2010, many still struggle with concentrated poverty rates of greater than 45 percent. (See Figure 2 and Appendix A for concentrated poverty rates for children and adults by neighborhood.) Nearly a quarter (24.1 percent) of the Bronx’s over 1.3 million residents lived in extreme poverty areas in 2006-2010; those 320,000 people represent over half of all City residents living in extreme poverty neighborhoods. Concentrated poverty disproportionately impacts Black and Latino communities. As is the case with poverty in New York City, concentrated poverty is more prevalent in communities with majority Black and Latino populations. Of the seven community districts with concentrated poverty rates of greater than 50 percent, all but one (Williamsburg/Greenpoint) have majority Black or Latino populations. One-third (33.0 percent) of all poor people living in extreme poverty neighborhoods are Black and about one half (49.9 percent) are Latino. Meanwhile, Blacks and Latinos make up just over one-fifth and just under one-third of the general population respectively. (See Figure 3.)
CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN NEW YORK CITY
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York 4
The full impact of the most recent recession on the City’s concentrated poverty remains to be seen. Limitations in the data used for this analysis may result in understating the prevalence of concentrated poverty in New York City. The most recent data available at the Census tract level reports an average of five years (2006-2010) of survey responses about household income. This time period included years of both economic boon and recession. Since New York City’s poverty rate continued to decline through 2008, when it hit a low of 18.2 percent (26.5 percent for children) before rising again to near-2000 levels, it is likely that the five-year averages do not fully reflect the impact of the recession, particularly in neighborhoods that have been hardest hit, such as many in the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn.5 This report was prepared by Courtney Wolf, Policy Associate for Research and Data Analysis.
5 For a detailed discussion of the limitations of the five-year data in this context, see Kneebone et al, p. 4.
Poverty Rate # Share # Share
20.1% 1,621,327 30.0% 522,955 25.9% 19.6% 208,570 11.9% 124,376 25.2%
16.4% 254,289 22.1% 51,039 19.7% 11.3% 16,157 6.8% 9,610 15.4%101/102 Battery Park/Tribeca/Greenwich Village 9.9% 14,107 7.5% 1,178 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐103 Lower East Side 22.2% 34,766 30.9% 6,929 16.2% 15.2% 3,159 13.8% 1,955 23.4%
104/105 Chelsea/Clinton/Midtown 11.7% 15,338 14.7% 1,526 4.6% 3.0% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐106 Murray Hill/Stuyvesant 7.0% 10,049 7.1% 988 5.0% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐107 Upper West Side 10.4% 20,430 6.5% 2,033 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐108 Uepper East Side 6.8% 14,637 2.4% 729 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐109 Manhattanville 28.7% 35,636 38.5% 8,871 5.2% 12.8% 2,184 10.5% 1,387 17.3%110 Central Harlem 28.1% 35,192 35.8% 9,006 41.6% 28.5% 6,443 23.5% 3,917 39.1%111 East Harlem 30.8% 34,595 44.2% 10,239 58.7% 24.9% 4,075 14.1% 2,211 18.0%112 Washington Heighhts 19.5% 39,539 26.5% 9,540 12.1% 1.4% 296 0.7% 140 0.9%
30.2% 408,584 43.0% 155,620 51.4% 39.5% 103,994 28.5% 61,663 42.0%201/202 Mott Haven/Hunts Point 41.1% 58,624 54.1% 23,117 78.6% 74.2% 30,222 68.6% 17,845 72.5%203/206 Morrisania/East Tremont 43.5% 67,963 58.6% 29,121 84.8% 65.3% 27,520 58.2% 16,650 66.2%204 Concourse/Highbridge 35.0% 50,740 46.4% 18,943 67.0% 45.8% 16,176 40.9% 9,451 49.7%205 University Heights 40.0% 53,621 52.5% 21,395 60.7% 55.6% 19,845 48.7% 11,871 57.7%207 Fordham 32.7% 39,950 41.4% 13,861 26.6% 28.1% 7,890 22.8% 4,298 28.6%208 Riverdale 18.5% 19,264 28.5% 5,893 10.9% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐209 Unionport/Soundview 25.4% 46,261 33.1% 15,571 40.3% 8.7% 2,323 4.9% 1,530 9.7%210 Throgs Neck 16.4% 17,557 37.4% 7,549 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐211 Pelham Parkway 21.1% 25,553 29.3% 8,445 0.2% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐212 Williamsbridge 21.2% 29,051 31.0% 11,725 14.5% 0.2% 18 ‐ 18 0.2%
23.0% 571,936 34.0% 198,536 25.2% 20.5% 82,918 14.1% 49,511 26.5%301 Williamsburg/Greenpoint 26.5% 38,744 40.9% 13,217 56.8% 54.3% 19,919 58.7% 12,076 74.8%302 Fort Greene/Brooklyn Heights 18.1% 22,024 22.8% 4,611 31.2% 16.5% 2,164 11.2% 1,402 27.0%303 Bedford Stuyvesant 30.7% 40,795 47.0% 16,204 38.0% 43.2% 15,721 42.2% 9,981 54.1%304 Bushwick 28.5% 39,782 42.0% 14,084 37.7% 16.7% 4,518 13.1% 2,542 17.5%305 East New York 36.0% 52,475 49.1% 20,739 26.5% 24.4% 7,266 16.7% 4,314 25.2%306 Park Slope 11.3% 13,398 13.3% 3,311 26.2% 30.6% 2,539 12.3% 1,371 50.0%307 Sunset Park 26.7% 36,862 33.4% 10,167 ‐ 4.5% 1,279 3.8% 792 7.2%308 Crown Heights North 25.9% 30,383 42.5% 10,590 21.0% 13.4% 3,104 11.3% 1,670 17.1%309 Crown Heights South 25.6% 27,015 36.7% 9,013 ‐ 3.1% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐310 Bat Ridge 15.3% 21,051 22.6% 6,436 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐311 Bensonhurst 14.0% 22,838 20.1% 6,290 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐312 Borough Park 32.2% 54,099 44.7% 25,756 19.6% 19.0% 7,649 13.8% 4,415 20.4%313 Coney Island 28.0% 28,735 39.4% 8,140 43.0% 2.2% 50 0.3% 50 0.9%314 Flatbush/Midwood 22.4% 36,246 31.8% 13,039 ‐ 3.0% 467 1.2% 239 2.1%315 Sheepshead Bay 13.7% 18,319 19.0% 4,515 9.8% 12.2% 1,322 4.8% 741 15.6%316 Brownsville 39.8% 44,756 53.4% 17,903 67.6% 54.1% 14,651 42.9% 8,569 53.5%317 East Flatbush 15.4% 21,316 20.6% 6,860 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐318 Canarsie 11.4% 23,098 16.1% 7,661 13.9% 17.3% 2,269 4.5% 1,349 19.7%
Appendix A: Poverty & Concentrated Poverty: New York City, by Borough, and by Community District
Poverty, 2010 Concentrated Poverty Rates Children in Concentrated Poverty, 2006‐2010
# of Poor People
Child Poverty Rate
# of Poor Children 2000 2006‐2010
All Children Poor Children
New York City
Manhattan
Bronx
Brooklyn
Poverty Rate # Share # Share
15.0% 332,165 21.8% 99,291 3.7% 2.5% 4,982 1.1% 3,277 4.0%401 Astoria/Long Island City 19.0% 31,618 30.2% 8,477 18.9% 6.9% 1,030 3.7% 758 10.1%402 Sunnyside/Woodside 12.2% 15,093 18.5% 3,775 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐403 Jackson Heights 22.4% 37,935 34.1% 12,581 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐404 Elmhurst/Corona 19.2% 25,920 26.3% 7,175 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐405 Ridgewood/Glendale 17.1% 30,888 26.5% 11,054 ‐ 2.6% 331 0.9% 187 2.9%406 Rego Park/Forest Hills 9.7% 11,049 12.3% 2,607 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐407 Flushing 14.3% 36,302 14.5% 6,337 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐408 Fresh Meadows/Briarwood 13.7% 18,566 18.7% 5,271 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐409 Woodhaven 13.1% 17,662 19.7% 5,787 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐410 Howard Beach 11.6% 15,635 18.1% 4,975 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐411 Bayside 7.3% 8,693 8.2% 1,941 0.2% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐412 Jamaica/St. Albans 18.8% 41,273 28.2% 14,342 2.0% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐413 Queens Village 7.1% 14,557 8.8% 3,679 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐414 The Rockaways 22.4% 26,974 33.4% 11,290 16.5% 20.3% 3,621 12.1% 2,332 27.6%
11.8% 54,353 17.1% 18,469 9.0% 1.7% 519 0.5% 315 2.0%501 Willowbrook 17.9% 30,277 26.2% 11,112 15.5% 2.8% 519 1.2% 315 3.1%502 South Beach 9.7% 12,643 12.6% 3,426 0.7% ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐503 Tottenville 7.0% 11,433 10.2% 3,931 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐
Appendix A: Poverty & Concentrated Poverty: New York City, by Borough, and by Community District (Cont'd)
Poverty, 2010 Concentrated Poverty Rates Children in Concentrated Poverty, 2006‐2010
All Children Poor Children
Queens
Staten Island
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census Summary File 3, 2000; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5‐year Estimates, 2010; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1‐Year Estimates, 2010; Citizens' Committee for Children analysis, 2012.
# of Poor People
Child Poverty Rate
# of Poor Children 2000 2006‐2010
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