Atlanta and Child Poverty

[peaceloveunderstanding]

I was looking through Census data and was shocked by the following statistics.

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTa...32&-CONTEXT=grt

48.1% Children Below the Poverty Level.

How is that possible in perhaps the most prosperous city in the South? Where is all this concentrated? Is anything being done about it? I find such stats very worrisome since many of these kids are going to be future criminals when they grow up; there is no end in sight for the violent reputation of Atlanta. Unfortunate.

[Martinman]

I was looking through Census data and was shocked by the following statistics.

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTa...32&-CONTEXT=grt

48.1% Children Below the Poverty Level.

How is that possible in perhaps the most prosperous city in the South? Where is all this concentrated? Is anything being done about it? I find such stats very worrisome since many of these kids are going to be future criminals when they grow up; there is no end in sight for the violent reputation of Atlanta. Unfortunate.

This is a combination of the fact that few families with children live in the city except poor families and that the city has or had the highest percentage of people on public assistance in the country (not sure if its still the case).

Its just another example of what the city is having to overcome to become a truly vibrant city. And one way that its dealing with it is that one by one, the city is redeveloping all of its public housing projects so that they are no longer warehouses of crime and poverty. They are become mixed income developments with some units for those on public assistance and some at market rate.

[teshadoh]

Additionally Atlanta also has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Again - we're talking about a city that covers less than 1/10th of it's metro area. So there are no middle income families to even it out, the city is mostly lower income families, middle income singles, & high income singles & families. The bedrock of any metropolitan area does not exist in Atlanta - though a number of post-gentrified neighborhoods such as Candler Park & Grant Park have a number of families that appear to be middle income, they are still on the high end - though the costs of living in the city likely do make them fall more into the middle income bracket.

What will be interesting to see is what the poverty rate for Clayton County will be in 2010, there is a massive vacuam of lower income residents leaving the city for Clayton & central / east Dekalb.

So Moonshield - when you ask when it could happen to the most prosperous city in the south, per ratio - that would likely be an Atlanta suburb such as Alpharetta or Duluth. But still - municipal boundaries, no matter how abstract they really are - play havoc on demographic data for cities. In the south we have many extremes, Charlotte & Raleigh with expansive boundaries that cover the majority of their suburbs and Miami & Atlanta that cover a minimal amount of wealthy suburbia.