In a "landmark reversal" of a 20-year trend, the number of people living in pockets of extreme poverty fell extensively during the 1990s, both in Baltimore and across the nation, according to a new study released today.
The report by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy showed that the number of people living in very poor neighborhoods dropped by 24 percent nationally and 28 percent in Baltimore between 1990 and 2000.
Those conclusions are echoed by a similar study from the Urban Institute. It found that even high-poverty neighborhoods had more adults with high school degrees and more working women than in 1990, as well as half the number of households receiving public assistance.
"The trend toward central cities having greater concentrations of poverty is not inevitable," said Paul A. Jargowsky, director of the Bruton Center at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of the Brookings report. "Central cities can come back."
Still, both studies note that the decline of concentrated inner-city poverty was often accompanied by higher poverty rates in outlying city neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs - a phenomenon observable in the Baltimore area. The number of poor people did not decrease - it is more spread out.
The authors attribute the changes in part to federal policies such as welfare reform and the demolition of high-rise public housing projects, and in part to the booming 1990s economy.
They also caution that many of those gains may have eroded as the economy soured in the three years since the 2000 census that provided the basis for the studies.
"To the extent that the economy is an explanation for all of this, I wouldn't be surprised to see things backslide," said G. Thomas Kingsley, who co-wrote the Urban Institute study.
Many social scientists say the degree to which poor people are concentrated is important because of evidence that it may tend to exacerbate the effects of poverty on families. Children in particular are thought to be harmed by growing up in extremely poor neighborhoods - because of the shortage of positive adult role models and because schools in such areas tend to perform poorly.
Greg J. Duncan, director of the Joint Center for Poverty Research of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, called the studies "important and good."
"At least in the 1990s, we've reversed a very ominous trend of concentrated poverty in our cities," he said. "It's not as though we've created ideal conditions. Even an area of 30 percent poverty can have a detrimental impact."
Barbara A. Samuels, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, echoed that concern.
The most impoverished neighborhoods in Baltimore are "basically emptying out," said Samuels, the lead attorney in a lengthy legal battle to break up concentrations of poor black residents in the city's public housing projects. To the extent that those former residents are moving to neighborhoods with 20 percent to 30 percent poverty rates, she said, "That's not really a good thing.
"I hate to sound like a broken record, but what you need is a concerted effort to open up affordable housing in areas with low poverty," Samuels said.
According to the Brookings study, the steepest declines in the number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods occurred in the Midwest. But the trend toward deconcentration of poverty was not universal.
In Washington, D.C., the number of extremely poor neighborhoods doubled, in large part because the District of Columbia's fiscal crisis of the 1990s drove middle-class black families from the city, the study said. Pockets of high poverty also grew in number and size in Los Angeles, San Diego, Providence, R.I. and Wilmington, Del.
Both the Brookings report, "Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems: The Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the 1990s," and the Urban Institute study, "Concentrated Poverty: A Change in Course," noted poverty became increasingly centered in urban cores from the late 1960s through 1990.
The studies defined as extremely poor the neighborhoods in which at least 40 percent of residents had incomes below the federal poverty rate. Under that measure, a family of four is considered poor if its annual income is below $18,400.
The trend of concentration changed in the 1990s. The Brookings report found that the number of people nationwide living in census tracts with extreme poverty declined from 10.4 million in 1990 to 7.9 million in 2000.
In the Baltimore metropolitan area, neighborhoods of such high poverty are almost exclusively a city phenomenon. One exception was a tract in Baltimore County dominated by Towson University, where large numbers of students reported low incomes, researchers said.
Overall, Baltimore was bypassed by the 1990s urban revitalization boom that saw cities such as Chicago and New York reverse decades of population decline. But Baltimore shared in the nationwide trend toward deconcentration of its poorest neighborhoods.
