PROVIDENCE – The number of poor Rhode Islanders rose in the suburbs but fell in the city during the last decade, mirroring a national trend of growing suburban poverty, according to a study released Wednesday.
In 2008, one in four Providence residents lived below the poverty level, which was $21,834 for a family of four that year, according to an analysis of Census Bureau figures by the Brookings Institution.
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Although 40,570 people in Providence lived below the poverty line in 2008, that was 6,118 fewer than in 2000, a decrease of 13 percent over eight years. The city’s poverty rate – the share of the total population living below the poverty line – was 25.4 percent in 2008.
By contrast, between 2000 and 2008 the number of poor residents in the suburbs of the Providence-Fall River-New Bedford metropolitan area increased by 13,537, or about 10 percent, to total 139,633. The suburban poverty rate was 10.1 percent.
The study also projected that the rise in unemployment last year increased the area’s poverty rate by about 3.2 percentage points from its level in 2000.
Nationwide, the poor population increased 15.4 percent from 2000 to 2008 – almost double the overall population growth rate over that period – meaning 13.2 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line by 2008, the study said.
“Since the start of this decade, two economic downturns have translated into significant increases in poverty across the country. But not all communities have borne the brunt of these increases equally,” Elizabeth Kneebone, a Brookings senior research analyst and co-author of the study, said in a news release.
“Suburbs have seen the greatest growth by far in the number of poor residents, and this trend toward the ‘suburbanization’ of poverty is only likely to continue in the wake of the most recent recession,” she said.
