<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.5730.11" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=4>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=800 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD align=left><A href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/"><IMG height=20
src="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/images/small-logo.gif" width=200
border=0></A></TD>
<TD align=right><FONT face="tahoma, sans-serif" size=2>Thursday,
December 7, 2006</FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR><!--include virtual="/inc/story_guts_print.asp"-->
<H2>Poverty moves to the suburbs </H2>
<H4 class=deck>Suburban poor outnumber those in the inner cities</H4>
<P class=byline><SPAN class=name><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/bylines.asp?bylinename=Associated%20Press">Associated
Press </A></SPAN><BR>December 7, 2006</P><!---------Code for Big Ads-------------------><!---------End Code for Big Ads------------------->
<P>WASHINGTON — As Americans flee the cities for the suburbs, many are failing
to leave poverty behind.</P>
<P>The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first
time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty,
according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas released
Thursday.</P>
<P>"Economies are regional now," said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for
the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Where you see increases in
city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in
suburban poverty."</P>
<P>
<TABLE align=left>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Nationally, the poverty rate leveled off last year
at 12.6 percent after increasing every year since the decade began. It was a
period when the country went through a recession and an uneven recovery that is
still sputtering in parts of the Northeast and Midwest.</P>
<P>"Looking back at the 1970s, you would have seen cities suffering and suburbs
staying the same," said Berube, research director at the Brookings Institution's
Metropolitan Policy Program. "But the story is different today."</P>
<P>Berube said several factors are contributing to an increase in suburban
poverty:</P>
<P>•Suburbs are adding people much faster than cities, making it inevitable that
the number of poor people living in suburbs would eventually surpass those
living in cities.</P>
<P>•The poverty rate in large cities (18.8 percent) is still higher than it is
in the suburbs (9.4 percent). But the overall number of people living in poverty
is higher in the suburbs in part because of population growth.</P>
<P>•America's suburbs are becoming more diverse, racially and economically.
"There's poverty really everywhere in metropolitan areas because there are
low-wage jobs everywhere," Berube said.</P>
<P>•Recent immigrants are increasingly bypassing cities and moving directly to
suburbs, especially in the South and West. Those immigrants, on average, have
lower incomes than people born in the United
States.</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>