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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 thefederal 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 inoverwhelmingly poor neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, communal resources arescarce and residents often face other significant obstacles to prosperity, such as a dearth of employment andeducational 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 Cityneighborhood-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 aserious problem for many communities.1

It is well-documented that for the residents of very poor neighborhoods, the burdens of individual poverty areamplified. The obstacles they face may include high crime rates, poor health outcomes, reduced privateinvestments, limited educational and job opportunities, and poor housing conditions.2 CCC recognizes thecumulative 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 populationliving 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 inthese 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 Citydeclined 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 povertyin 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 childrenin 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 theaverage 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 thecitywide concentrated poverty rate has declined, improvements have not been experienced consistently across theCity’s neighborhoods. Indeed, in eight communities, the concentrated poverty rates rose between 2000 and the2006-2010 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 percentin 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





poverty level (about $22,000 for a family of four in 2010). More than half (54.1 percent) of poor children and42.2 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 inmany cases even more troubling. For example, in the South Bronx neighborhoods of Mott Haven and HuntsPoint (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 andalmost three-quarters (72.5 percent) of all children in these communities lived in areas of extreme poverty in2006-2010.

In fact, while most communities in the Bronx saw their concentrated poverty rates decline between 2000 and2006-2010, many still struggle with concentrated poverty rates of greater than 45 percent. (See Figure 2 andAppendix 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 povertyin 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 butone (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 populationrespectively. (See Figure 3.)





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 andrecession. 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 averagesdo not fully reflect the impact of the recession, particularly in neighborhoods that have been hardest hit, such asmany 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

15.0% 332,165 21.8% 99,291 3.7% 2.5%

401 Astoria/Long Island City 19.0% 31,618 30.2% 8,477 18.9% 6.9%

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%

406 Re go 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%

11.8% 54,353 17.1% 18,469 9.0% 1.7%

501 Willowbrook 17.9% 30,277 26.2% 11,112 15.5% 2.8%

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 Dist

Poverty, 2010 Concentrated Poverty Rate s

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,

Citizens' Committee for Children analysis, 2012.

# of Poor

People

Child

Poverty Rate

# of Poor

Children 2000 2006‐2010



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