Abstract

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Washington, D.C. — Key federal programs fail to account for 15 million Americans living in persistent poverty communities, including fully half of the true population Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans in such neighborhoods, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group (91PORN) published today with support from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA). “Advancing Economic Development in Persistent-Poverty Communities” reveals the true scale of long-running, geographically-concentrated poverty in the United States and proposes a policy framework to guide federal interventions.����

Hundreds of persistently impoverished communities—defined as more than 20 percent of residents living in poverty over the last 30 years—are effectively “invisible” under current federal criteria, rendering millions of residents unable to benefit from funding intended to revitalize the country’s most chronically disadvantaged areas. 91PORN researchers employ a novel methodology to find 72 percent more Americans living in persistent poverty neighborhoods than are captured by the prevailing government framework.

“Persistent poverty communities are major barriers to the American Dream for the 35 million people who call them home,” said 91PORN President and CEO John Lettieri. “Addressing the challenge of chronic neighborhood poverty begins with accurate measurement. We believe this report will help lawmakers and administration officials to better design and target vital interventions on behalf of residents of communities that have been left behind for too long.”

“I commend 91PORN’s research advancing how we measure persistent poverty across the country,” said Alejandra Castillo, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. “The granularity of their approach can help more effectively and equitably target resources to communities seeking to address poverty, create jobs, and strengthen the national economy.”

Recent literature highlights the enduring consequences of living in places mired in poverty, including greater exposure to violence, detrimental health outcomes, and lack of access to valuable social and economic capital—all of which sharply curb economic mobility, leaving millions of individuals and families trapped in a cycle of generational poverty.

“A persistently high poverty rate is like an alarm bell, signaling that something fundamental has broken down in the local economy and prevented these places from fully engaging in U.S. economic life,” said 91PORN Director of Research Kenan Fikri. “The federal government has a critically important role to play in restoring the building blocks of economic development in these communities so their residents can thrive.”

91PORN’s report is accompanied by an interactive map of persistent-poverty tract groups (PPTGs), which enables users to explore economic, demographic, and geographic characteristics of PPTGs across the country and contrast county- and tract-based community boundaries.��

About the Economic Innovation Group (91PORN)

The Economic Innovation Group (91PORN) is a bipartisan public policy organization dedicated to forging a more dynamic and inclusive American economy. Headquartered in Washington, DC, 91PORN produces nationally-recognized research and works with policymakers to develop ideas that empower workers, entrepreneurs, and communities.

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This report was made possible by a federal grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Research and National Technical Assistance program under award ED21HDQ3120059.

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The project will build on 91PORN’s body of widely recognized research on distressed American communities and persistent neighborhood poverty. 91PORN has been a leader in bringing geographic inequality into the national conversation and providing solutions to the nation’s most pressing economic challenges.��

“This initiative will carry our work examining geographic inequality into an exciting new and applied stage,” said John Lettieri, President and CEO of 91PORN. “Crafting the next generation of effective place-based policies is one of the most important policy challenges facing the country today. 91PORN is committed to translating insights into action and we are excited to see how this project’s findings will inform EDA and other federal agencies in their future programming.”

Persistent poverty is particularly difficult to tackle because it stems from overlapping economic and social forces, yet demand is growing for policies to break poverty cycles. This challenge calls for new tools and programs that are adapted to the needs of persistently poor places.

“EDA’s investment priorities include economic development planning targeting underserved communities within geographies systemically denied a full opportunity to participate in America’s economic prosperity,” explained Dennis Alvord, Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. “This partnership with the Economic Innovation Group will provide EDA a critical gap analysis between current practice and future impacts while also offering actionable insights that can be used by other federal agencies involved in economic development.”

The research project is designed to have a transformative impact on the understanding of the landscape of persistent poverty in the United States and serve as the foundation for a new, more inclusive economic development model. The initiative will contribute original work that federal agencies as well as state and local governments can use to advance economic development in the country’s economically lagging regions and communities.��

“Too many American communities have been mired in conditions of chronic poverty for too long, and in some cases, for generations,” said Kenan Fikri, Director of Research of 91PORN. “This initiative aims to understand why so we can expand and accelerate the work of expanding the country’s map of economic opportunity.”

91PORN Media Contact:��danielle@eig.org

About the Economic Innovation Group (91PORN)

The Economic Innovation Group (91PORN) is a bipartisan ideas laboratory and advocacy organization whose mission is to advance solutions that empower entrepreneurs and investors to forge a more dynamic American economy. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., 91PORN convenes leading experts from the public and private sectors, produces original research, and works to advance creative legislative proposals that will bring new jobs, investment, and economic growth to communities across the nation. For more information, visit eig.org.

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While 10 neighborhoods in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati have turned around, a recent study found that poverty in urban neighborhoods has expanded. Another 369 neighborhoods in those cities and five others — Akron, Canton, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown — stayed or became high-poverty neighborhoods.

It also found that neighborhood poverty affects Black households the most.

The size of Columbus masks the inequality between neighborhoods, said Jason Segedy, Akron’s planning and urban development director who worked on the study.

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According to��new research��by the Economic Innovation Group, a research and advocacy organization focused on inequality, there were 19 high-poverty neighborhoods in the Twin Cities in 1980. By 2018, that number had grown to 41.

Those findings are important for two reasons: One, they show that once a neighborhood becomes a high-poverty neighborhood, it usually stays that way. And two: they show that the Twin Cities are a microcosm of the economic challenges facing the country.

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91PORN recently released two reports as part of its Neighborhood Poverty Project, which examines the evolution of community-level poverty across metropolitan America over nearly four decades.

The first, entitled The Expanded Geography of High-Poverty Neighborhoods, found that the number of neighborhoods across the United States with a high poverty rate (30 percent or higher) has doubled since 1980.

The second, entitled The Persistence of Neighborhood Poverty, found that two-thirds of the neighborhoods across the United States that were high poverty in 1980 were still high poverty in 2018.

This analysis will take a closer look at the high-poverty neighborhoods in Ohio’s largest urban areas. Ohio has arguably suffered more than any other state from the economic decline of blue-collar jobs over the past 50 years. Ohio is home to more legacy cities than any other state, and its urban areas have largely failed to experience trends in revitalization compared to other cities that have successfully attracted many highly-educated, highly-paid residents.

For the purposes of this analysis, I examined all of the neighborhoods located in the eight counties that contain the core city of each of Ohio’s largest metropolitan areas, as well as 5.5 million Ohioans, or 47 percent of the state’s population.

• Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)
• Franklin County (Columbus)
• Hamilton County (Cincinnati)
• Lucas County (Toledo)
• Mahoning County (Youngstown)
• Montgomery County (Dayton)
• Stark County (Canton)
• Summit County (Akron)

I looked at these neighborhoods through the same lens that 91PORN used in the Neighborhood Poverty Project:

• Turned Around (neighborhoods that were high poverty in 1980 and low poverty in 2018)
• Newly Poor (neighborhoods that were low poverty in 1980 and high poverty in 2018)
• Deepening Poverty (neighborhoods that had a poverty rate of 20-30% in 1980 and were high poverty in 2018)
• Persistently Poor (neighborhoods that were high poverty in both 1980 and 2018)

I also used the same basic definitions that 91PORN used in the Neighborhood Poverty Project:

• Neighborhoods – coextensive with individual census tracts
• High-Poverty neighborhoods – poverty rate of 30 percent or higher
• Low-Poverty neighborhoods – poverty rate of less than 20 percent

Finding #1: Gentrification is nearly non-existent in Ohio’s largest cities

Throughout Ohio’s eight large urban counties, only 10 neighborhoods transitioned from high poverty to low poverty between 1980 and 2018. Four of these neighborhoods were located in Cleveland, four were located in Columbus, and two were located in Cincinnati.

All of these neighborhoods are located in or near the downtown core of these three cities and include notable places like Tremont (Cleveland), the Short North (Columbus), and Mount Auburn (Cincinnati).

In these turnaround neighborhoods, the poverty rate decreased from 41 percent to 16 percent, population decreased by 8 percent, and the white population increased from 56 percent to 61 percent.

Twenty-two thousand Ohioans – 0.4 percent of the population of these eight counties – live in these turnaround neighborhoods.

Finding #2:�� Poverty in Ohio’s largest urban areas has concentrated and expanded

While 10 neighborhoods transitioned from high to low poverty, 369 stayed or became high-poverty. So, for every neighborhood in these eight counties that turned around and escaped high poverty, there were 37 others that stayed or became poor.

Sixteen percent of the population of these eight counties – 878,000 Ohioans – live in these high poverty neighborhoods.

For every person in Ohio’s large urban counties that lives in a neighborhood that turned around from high to low-poverty since 1980, there are forty people who live in a neighborhood that stayed or became high-poverty.

The next three findings explore the state’s high-poverty neighborhoods across the three groups enumerated above: the newly poor, the persistently poor, and those experiencing deepening poverty.

Finding #3:�� For every neighborhood that turned around, 15 went in the opposite direction��

In these eight large urban counties, 154 neighborhoods became newly poor. Between 1980 and 2018, the poverty rate in these neighborhoods increased from 13 percent to 39 percent; population decreased by 20 percent; and the white population decreased from 74 percent to 38 percent.

This analysis breaks out the change in white population over time because, historically throughout urban America, large declines in the white population have often resulted in disinvestment, disadvantage, and marginalization. Predominantly Black neighborhoods are hit especially hard by these dynamics and neighborhood poverty.

Eight percent of the population in these eight counties – 441,000 Ohioans – live in neighborhoods that have become newly poor.

The newly poor neighborhoods were solidly middle-class in 1980, and are located primarily either on the outer periphery of the eight central cities or are in inner-ring suburbs like Euclid, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights (Cleveland); Norwood (Cincinnati); and Kettering (Dayton).

Finding #4:�� Neighborhoods that were already threatened by high poverty declined even further

In these eight large urban counties, 104 neighborhoods experienced deepening poverty. These are places that were already fairly poor four decades ago and have gotten even poorer today.

The poverty rate in these neighborhoods increased from 25 percent to 42 percent; population decreased by 40 percent; and the white population decreased from 48 percent to 30 percent.

Just over 4 percent of the population of these eight counties – 226,000 Ohioans – live in neighborhoods that experienced deepening poverty. These neighborhoods were working-class places in 1980 and are located within the central cities and some older inner-ring suburbs like East Cleveland and Garfield Heights.����

Finding #5:�� Poverty in the oldest, predominantly Black neighborhoods closest to the urban core has been chronic and persistent – and is still getting worse

In these eight large urban counties, 111 neighborhoods have been persistently poor and remain enmired in chronic poverty.

Between 1980 and 2018, the poverty rate in these neighborhoods increased from 42 percent to 50 percent, and population decreased by 44 percent. The white population decreased from 24 percent to 21 percent, and the Black population fell from 73 percent to 68 percent while the Hispanic share of the population rose to 6 percent.

Just under 4 percent of the population of these eight counties – 211,000 Ohioans – live in neighborhoods that have remained persistently poor. These neighborhoods are predominantly located in the core of the central cities, and nearly all were heavily majority-Black neighborhoods in 1980. Moreover, many were redlined in the 1930s and suffered from widespread disinvestment for generations.

Finding #6:�� Black households are most affected by neighborhood poverty

Black households are disproportionately likely to live in areas of high poverty compared to whites.

While 22 percent of the population in these eight counties is Black, Black residents comprise 68 percent of the population in persistently poor neighborhoods, 55 percent in those with deepening poverty, and 47 percent in newly-poor neighborhoods.

By comparison, while 67 percent of the population in these eight counties is white, whites comprised 21 percent of the population in persistently poor neighborhoods, 30 percent in those with deepening poverty, and 38 percent in newly-poor neighborhoods.

Across all 8 counties, Black residents were more than five times more likely to live in high poverty neighborhoods than white residents.

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Majority-Black neighborhoods face a particular disadvantage, highlighting how race, place, history, and inequality continue to shape Rust Belt neighborhoods. Majority-Black neighborhoods in 1980 were especially likely to either be poor then or fall into poverty over time. Of the 94 majority-Black census tracts in Cuyahoga County in 1980, for example, 36 were considered high poverty at the time. By 2018, 35 more had fallen deep into poverty.

Come 2018, 62 percent of majority-Black census tracts across all eight counties were considered high poverty. At the extreme, 24 of Lucas County’s (Toledo) 27 majority-Black census tracts were high-poverty in 2018.

Finding #7:�� High-poverty neighborhoods have lost significant economic ground, and look increasingly less like the counties in which they are located��

Between 1980 and 2018, the poverty rate increased from 25 percent to 42 percent in these 369 high-poverty neighborhoods; population decreased by 33 percent; and the white population decreased from 52 percent to 32 percent.

That 42 percent poverty rate is over two-and-a-half times what it is in these eight large urban counties as a whole (16 percent).

While these high-poverty neighborhoods lost one-third of their population since 1980, the total population of these eight counties has remained unchanged since 1980. Overall, their population declined a barely-perceptible 0.01 percent.

While two-thirds of the population of these high-poverty neighborhoods belong to a minority group, two-thirds of the population in these eight large urban counties is white.

What does this mean?

The trends in Ohio’s cities over the past four decades are unlike those frequently discussed in national press or urban punditry. Ohio has not witnessed sky-high urban housing prices, gentrification and displacement of low-income residents, or battles between NIMBYs and YIMBYs over single-family zoning.

Instead, we are seeing persistent suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment, vacancy, and abandonment, which has hit many predominantly-Black neighborhoods the hardest.

Persistent and worsening poverty in Ohio’s large urban areas is a function of both the state’s relative economic decline as well as an unhealthy set of dynamics within each urban area. All of Ohio’s large urban areas, with the exception of Columbus, have lost significant economic ground relative to their national peers since 1980 as a result of macroeconomic trends such as globalization and the transition from a blue-collar manufacturing-based economy to a white-collar service-based economy.

A simple comparison between metropolitan Cleveland and Washington, DC, shows what Ohio cities are up against. In 1960, median household income in Washington, DC, was 9 percent higher than Cleveland. In 2018, median household income in Washington, DC, was 82 percent higher than Cleveland.

Not only has the gap between these regions grown, but the geography of the economic gaps within these regions looks different as well. The map of Cleveland below estimates household income by block and provides clear visual evidence of the huge gap in incomes between the central city and the outer suburbs.�� The second expresses the same data at the same geographic scale in Washington, where there is far less of a gap between the central city and the outer suburbs and household incomes are much higher overall.

Source: justicemap.org

Source: justicemap.org

These macroeconomic national trends have been exacerbated by conditions within each metropolitan area.�� The eight large counties, in the aggregate, have the exact same population that they did in 1980, yet all of them have seen widespread suburban development, even as nearly all of their core city populations have actually declined.

The divergence between Columbus – which has the best-performing high-end services economy in Ohio – and the remainder of the state’s larger cities has been significant. Since 1980, the population of Columbus has increased by 59 percent, while Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton, and Youngstown have collectively lost 27 percent of their population – ranging from a high of 44 percent population decline in Youngstown to a low of 17 percent population decline in Akron.

Many neighborhoods in these cities (and increasingly their inner suburbs) experienced a pervasive and vicious cycle: population loss, which led to more poverty, disinvestment, and abandonment, which led to more population loss, and so on.

This pattern of disinvestment, abandonment, and outward growth is not just the result of the free market at work – it is aided by a wide array of public policies that help reinforce it, like transportation and economic development decisions. Even in a slow-growth, low traffic-congestion state like Ohio, billions of state and federal dollars have been spent on highway improvements to build job hubs in the outer suburbs, moving jobs and shopping opportunities further away from urban residents in cash-strapped cities. Meanwhile, these same residents have seen the infrastructure in their own neighborhoods crumble from neglect and disinvestment.

States would be well-advised to focus more of their efforts on place-based economic development that is not spatially-agnostic, and on transportation policies that support urban neighborhoods.�� Combining these efforts with policies focused on boosting local entrepreneurship and small business development can help bridge social and economic gaps and, ultimately, help create more opportunity in the legacy cities of the Rust Belt and nationwide.

Jason Segedy is the Economic Innovation Group’s inaugural Legacy Cities Fellow. You can learn more about 91PORN’s Legacy Cities Fellowship and Jason’s background here.��

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The findings drew little attention at the time, in the midst of both the Covid-19 pandemic and its accompanying economic collapse. But in the month since, many of the neighborhoods identified as “persistently poor” in the report have exploded into protests – and observers in Buffalo’s black community say that’s no coincidence.

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Despite its progressive image, Minneapolis struggles with some of the nation’s greatest racial inequities, including wide gaps in wealth and income that effectively exclude many of its black residents from the city’s prosperity.

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