Posted on 08/31/2005 4:29:40 AM PDT by mark502inf
Detroit has surpassed Cleveland as the nation's most impoverished big city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
Survey figures released Tuesday show 33.6 percent - more than one-third - of Detroit's residents lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2004, the largest percentage of any U.S. city of 250,000 or more people.
The top five were Detroit; El Paso, Texas (28.8 percent); Miami (28.3 percent); Newark, N.J. (28.1 percent); and Atlanta (27.8 percent).
Detroit has lost about half its population since a half-century ago. It is now the country's 11th largest city with just over 900,000 residents.
Cleveland, which was No. 1 in 2003, dropped to No. 12 as the percentage of its residents living in poverty fell from 31.3 percent to 23.2 percent.
The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. A family of four with two children was considered living in poverty if their income was $19,157 or less. For a family of two with no children, it was $12,649. It was $9,060 for a person 65 or over who was living alone.
Nearly half of Detroit's children under age 18 are impoverished, according to the survey. With 47.8 percent of its children living in poverty, Detroit trailed only Atlanta (48.1 percent) among the largest cities.
A message was left seeking comment from Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's office.
The nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, and the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million - up 1.1 million from 2003.
The Michigan Democratic Party used the survey's release to encourage the Legislature to act on a recommendation from Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm to increase the state's hourly minimum wage to $7.15 from the current federal level of $5.15.
Nate Bailey, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said increases in the minimum wage would force employers to cut jobs, and that would lead to greater unemployment.
Michigan's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 7 percent in July, the highest among the nation's 50 states. The national rate was 5 percent.
"We're leading the country in unemployment, we're leading the country in jobs lost and now our largest city is last in personal income," Bailey said. "This is Jennifer Granholm's Michigan."
Same thing with Miami. What alot of people don't realize is that there are more people who live in unincoporated Miami-Dade County (and have "Miami" as their address) or in places like Coral Gables than live in the CITY of Miami, which only has a population of 330,000. The CITY of Miami has the huge black ghettos of Liberty City and Overtown, as well as the largely Central American slum of Riverside. Miami-Dade County actually has some of the most expensive real estate in the state in Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Key Biscayne, Cocoplum and several other neighborhoods.
Yeah,
I'll take "poor" Atlanta over the others anyday.
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