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Issue 2, 2006
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Q&A with Paul A. Jargowsky
An associate professor at the
University of Texas at Dallas, Jargowsky directs the
Bruton Center for Development Studies, which researches
urban and regional development policies and trends,
and the Texas Schools Project, which studies educational
issues. His research interests center on the geographic
concentration of poverty and residential segregation
by race and class. His award-winning book, Poverty
and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City,
comprehensively examines poverty at the neighborhood
level.
How did the term concentrated poverty
come about?
Before the 1960s, people generally
thought that poverty was related to place. For example,
they would refer to rural, Skid Row or Appalachian poverty.
Then in the 1960s, Molly Orshansky at the Social Security
Administration invented the official poverty line, which
was an estimate of how much it costs a family to cover
basic necessities.
The problem with this definition
is that its poverty threshold is the same regardless
of the local cost of living, focusing solely on one
family’s income and ignoring the neighborhood
context. The relationship between poverty and place
came back into focus when William Julius Wilson, now
a professor at Harvard University, published The Truly
Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public
Policy. This book reintroduced the concept of poor people
being worse off when their neighbors are also poor,
compared with those living in mixed-income neighborhoods.
Why is it relevant to talk about concentrated
poverty instead of poverty in general?
It is important to care about
the total number of poor people. However, a poor child
who goes to a failing school, whose classmates are poor
and neighbors are not working at regular jobs, is much
worse off than a poor child who is surrounded by people
whose expectation is to achieve academically and professionally.
It is significantly more difficult for children living
in concentrated poverty to make wise choices because
they are likely to lack the opportunity and information
on how to improve their livelihoods.
What causes concentrated poverty?
There are push and pull factors
at work. First, we used to push people into neighborhoods
of concentrated poverty by constructing large-scale
public housing projects. Now we do the flip side of
that. Very large tracts of land are developed just for
higher-income households. By building housing for only
one income level in a neighborhood, we segregate people.
Second, increasing crime, such as at the time of the
riots in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed the white middle
class from the central city. This is what we commonly
know as white flight. Third, new housing developments
with attractive amenities pull people farther and farther
out in the suburbs. This pattern continues now, such
as when people move from the Dallas suburb of Richardson
to Plano or McKinney.
Are there any positive aspects of
concentrated poverty?
Let’s look at immigrant
gateways. When immigrants move into poor neighborhoods
with other immigrants, their similar backgrounds help
them transition into the new environment. The question
is what happens to the second generation of immigrants.
Are they living in these same high-poverty neighborhoods,
or do they have and take the opportunity to improve
their families’ quality of life? When we talk
about concentrated poverty, the core issue is the degree
of upward mobility for people of all races, incomes,
and so forth.
The strength of weak ties is an
associated issue. While in the short term it may be
comfortable to be surrounded by neighbors who are in
the same conditions as oneself, in the long run it is
more important to have access to people who have more
resources, including knowledge about job opportunities.
This is a well-known argument made by sociologist Mark
Granovetter.
What do you think is a sustainable
solution to concentrated poverty?
If more communities or cities
were sharing the responsibility for providing housing
for different income levels, then there wouldn’t
be as much concern that any one neighborhood would bear
a disproportionate amount of the lower-income housing
burden. Coordination between jurisdictions could help
eliminate the destructive forms of competition so that
the rules of the game change.
In the current housing situation,
the rules of the game dictate that today’s winners
will be tomorrow’s losers. We live in a society
where there is a very predictable progression of suburban
development. New suburbs will become old suburbs, which
start deteriorating. When some people see minorities
and poor people moving into their neighborhoods, they
start to consider moving out. They are making a sensible
choice, given the existing structure of how neighborhoods
develop, because they understand what happens to property
values.
This pattern of rapid laissez-faire
housing development can facilitate segregation and the
concentration of poverty and limit poor people’s
access to opportunity. Fortunately, this type of development
is not inevitable.
Our current population is 300
million people, and it is projected to be 364 million
by the year 2030, a 21 percent increase. We will have
to build housing for all of these people. In addition,
some current housing units will have to be replaced,
so we will need a 25 to 30 percent larger housing stock.
In what pattern are we going to
build? Are we going to build neighborhoods in such a
way that poor kids will go to school only with other
poor children? Are we going to build them in a pattern
that leads to higher segregation by race or income so
that poor people live in jurisdictions that lack basic
infrastructure while rich people live in those with
high-quality infrastructure and public services? Or
are we going to build them so that there is less division
between the income classes and racial groups, making
it easier for poor people to be integrated into the
social and economic mainstream?
In my opinion, spatial access
to opportunity is the great emerging social challenge
of the 21st century.
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Banking and Community Perspectives
Federal Reserve
Bank of Dallas
Community Development Office
P.O. Box 655906
Dallas, Texas 75265-5906
The views expressed
are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank
of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
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