Neanderpaul,
It litterally took me about 30 seconds to find this on the "Housing and Urban Development" website which is part of the united states federal government. This study showed that urban families are more poor than suburban families and that poverty is more frequent among minorities. It also states that middle and upperclass families are moving out of cities to suburbs at huge rates. So there are my facts.
http://www.huduser.org/publications/polleg/tsoc98/part1-2.html
Part One: The State of America's Cities
Finding #2: Despite recent gains, cities still face the triple threat of concentrated poverty, shrinking populations, and middle-class flight that began two decades ago.
Even as the economic health of cities improves, the movement of population -- particularly the middle class -- from city to suburbs continues. This decentralization process has been operating for more than a century, pushing the boundaries of metropolitan areas far from the city and prompting rapid development of outlying counties.
Many factors explain middle-class flight and poverty and racial concentration, from job growth on the suburban fringe to persistent housing discrimination, from the resource and quality advantages of suburban schools to the greater incidence of crime (and greater fear of crime) in the cities. These long-run trends call for concerted action now, while the economy is strong, from leaders in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors working together.
More families of every income level move out of cities than move in, but the disparity is particularly stark among middle- and upper-income families. From 1970 to 1997, nearly 6 million middle-income and affluent families have left the cities. At the same time, between 1985 and 1995, the number of high-income families -- with 150 percent or more of area median income -- living in suburbs grew by 16 percent, compared with just 2 percent for central cities. When families are asked why they leave cities, the two most common answers are the poor quality of city schools and the higher rates of crime in cities as compared with suburbs.
As families with the resources to do so move to suburban areas in search of better housing, good schools, and safer neighborhoods, income growth in the city lags suburban income growth. In the Northeast and Midwest, the 1996 median household income in the suburbs was 67 percent higher than in central cities, up from the 58- percent gap reported in 1989. City/suburb income disparities were less in the South and the West. Even so, in 1996 suburban incomes were 31 percent higher than central city incomes, up sharply from the 1989 figure of 22 percent.
Poverty Is More Frequent and Affects More Minorities in Cities
While cities contain 30 percent of metropolitan America's population, they are home to half of all low-income families in metropolitan areas.18 This concentration of poverty in cities persists even as overall poverty declines. Poverty rates in central cities rose steadily from 1970 to 1993, increasing by 50 percent. Even with the drop in central city poverty rates since 1993, 1 in every 5 city families lived in poverty in 1996, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 suburban families. And there is a growing dichotomy in rates of minority poverty. While the rate of African-American poverty is at its lowest level in history, poverty in cities disproportionately affects minority populations -- 72 percent of the poor in cities are minority.
Poverty Remains Highly Concentrated in Selected Neighborhoods
Lack of affordable housing opportunities in the suburbs combined with persistent housing market discrimination adds to the concentration of poor families in central city neighborhoods. More than 10 percent of all city residents live in neighborhoods where the U.S. Bureau of the Census reports that 40 percent or more of the households are living below the poverty line, doubling the concentration in 1970. In many of these places, intense and long-standing poverty and welfare dependency occur simultaneously with alarmingly high rates of crime, drug abuse, single parenthood, high school drop out rates, and other social problems.
