A Re-count of Poverty in US Central Cities: Just Who and Where Are the Urban Poor?

Abstract

Poverty remains a persistent problem in central cities across the US and the government's approach to measuring it is not without shortcomings. This paper applies recently developed innovations in poverty measurement and presents improved estimates of central-city poverty across time. A broader and more comprehensive income concept is employed to measure family resources and important distributional aspects of poverty are incorporated by using the Sen index. In general, Sen indexes for the central city are significantly reduced when comprehensive income is used to evaluate poverty. Motivating these changes are the substantial reductions that occur in the depth of poverty and the relative income inequality among poor central-city residents. Regionally, the results suggest that the elements of comprehensive income have their greatest impact on estimates of poverty in Southern central cities, while the central cities of the West are least affected.