Central Valley’s Stockton shows nation’s biggest drop in poverty

from Central Valley Business Times

The Stockton metropolitan area had the biggest percentage drop in poverty of any of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, according to a study released Thursday by the Brookings Institution.

Stockton is one of just two large metro areas in the West that had decreases in poverty rates between 1999 and 2005, the report says. The other was Los Angeles, which saw a 1.2 percent drop.

Stockton’s poverty rate is still high – 14.6 percent of the metro area’s population – but it’s down 1.8 percent since 1999, the report says.

The poverty rate in Bakersfield, Modesto and Sacramento remained essentially the same over the 1999-2005 period, but Fresno’s saw a drop of 0.4 percent, according to Brookings.

Nationally, poverty has increased and in most communities since 1999, as results from the 2005 American Community Survey says. The proportion of children in poverty has risen, too, eroding much of the progress made in the 1990s, says the Brookings report.

“Many cities witnessed increases in poverty over this period, but the most striking developments have affected suburbs, which for the first time contain a majority of the nation’s poor population,” the report says. “These trends are in large part the function of the 2001-02 recession and slow wage growth thereafter for lower-skilled workers.”

The “poverty rate” represents the proportion of family members and unrelated individuals in a particular place with incomes below the applicable federal poverty threshold, Brookings says.

In 1999 large cities and their suburbs had nearly equal numbers of poor individuals, but by 2005 the suburban poor outnumbered their city counterparts by at least 1 million, the report says.

In all, more than 12 million suburban residents were living in poverty in 2005, according to the study.