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Low-Income Families and Communities

August 12, 2008

In a new report, Reversal of Fortune: A New Look at Concentrated Poverty in the 2000’s, Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone detail significant trends in concentrated poverty rates over the course of this decade. The authors explain that following a dramatic decline in concentrated poverty in the 1990s, the number of low-income workers and families living in high-working-poverty neighborhoods rose by a striking 41% in the first half of this decade. They argue that policies that foster stronger national and regional economic growth—together with targeted efforts to create and protect neighborhoods of choice and connection—may offer the best route to longer-term progress against concentrated poverty.