Concentrated Poverty in Metro Atlanta

Concentrated poverty has detrimental consequences for individual households and neighborhoods; it can also “push” away businesses and middle-class families, further undermining those neighborhoods and fueling sprawl. Poverty also affects the “geography of opportunity” for those people who remain in inner-city neighborhoods. Neighborhoods of extreme poverty are isolated from economic and educational opportunities elsewhere in the city or region. Poor residents often lack the means—such as information about suburban jobs and reliable and affordable transportation to work—to access those distant opportunities. Research has shown that life outcomes for poor children who grow up in high-poverty neighborhoods are much worse than similar children who move to low-poverty neighborhoods.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development determined the 2017 income thresholds for a family of four in Metro Atlanta at:

1. $55,750 for low income family,
2. $34,850 for very low income family,
3. $24,600 for extremely low income family

Based on data of median household income, I classified low income, very low income and extremely low income neighborhoods.

In this research, I will specifically focus on 46 neighborhoods with extremely low income.

Several recent studies point to reality challenging the perception that the poor are concentrated in the central city while the middle-income and higher-income populations are living in the suburbs.

According to some researches, there is a shift of concentrated poverty from urban to suburban area. However, my map tells a different story.

As we can see from the map, most of the extremely poor neighborhoods are actually located within city border. Totally there are 46 of them.

• 34 are located within the city jurisdiction; 7 are located within 5 miles radius of the city border;
• 2 are located within 10 miles radius, and 3 are located over 10 miles radius of the city.

As we can see from the map, less than 18% of the residents use public transit to commute in 20 out of 46 extremely poor neighborhoods in Atlanta.

It is worth noting that all neighborhoods with over 18% of its residents using public transit are all located within 10 miles radius of the city, while all regions outside of the 10 miles radius have less than 3% of their residents using public transit.

In this map, we can see public transit (bus and/or subway) serves almost all extremely poor neighborhoods, except for the three neighborhoods located outside of the buffer area.

Dispersing the poor all corners of our region make it that much harder to provide services, like public transportation service shown in this map. Those three neighbourhoods are located over 10 miles radius of the city.

Actually, most of the nation’s public policy programs and social services have been designed to serve the poor living in central cities. Suburbs often do not have the services, such as reliable public transit, that exist in more urban areas.

There are only 2 out of 46 neighborhoods (both in Fulton county) that have hospitals within its area. In addition, 14 neighborhoods do not have any hospitals within 2 miles radius (I excluded the buffer area of other neighborhoods in the map for clarity). This is alarming as proximity to hospital is important for the well-being of the citizens, especially in case of medical emergency.

Access to education is important to improve the quality of life of the residents. This map shows that all extremely low income neighborhoods are being served by K12 education.

The neighborhoods located within and near the city area have more options for schools compared to the ones located far from the city.

There are schools located within 2 miles radius from these neighborhoods, however it will be difficult for kids from the neighborhoods which are under-served by public transit to attend these schools as they need to ride a car or walk for more than an hour to reach the schools.

One of the major complaints from the residents in these poor neighborhoods is lack of access to retail or grocery stores.

From the map, we can see that only 2 out of 46 neighborhoods have retail stores within its area. And 11 neighborhoods, all located in the Southwest of the region, do not have any retail stores within 2 miles radius

Future Fortunes: Trends in Educational Attainment in the Most Populous Metros. Retrieved from https://www.frbatlanta.org/community-development/publications/

Rooted in Public Policy, Residential Segregation Remains a Persistent Problem. Retrieved from https://www.frbatlanta.org/economy-matters/community-and-economic-development

Online Tool Aids Atlanta Policymakers, Community Members. Retrieved from https://www.frbatlanta.org/community-development/publications/

How Atlanta Became The Capital Of Income Inequality. Retrieved from https://www.wabe.org/atlanta-income-inequality/

Atlanta counted among five global cities boldly fighting consequences of sprawl. Retrieved from https://atlanta.curbed.com/

Georgia Department of Public Health. https://dph.georgia.gov/useful-gis-links

Georgia Department of Community Health. GDCH Division of Public Health Data. Retrieved from  https://data.georgiaspatial.org 

Atlanta Regional Commission. Transit Routes. Retrieved from  http://opendata.atlantaregional.co 

Atlanta Regional Commission. Cities Georgia. Retrieved from  http://opendata.atlantaregional.com 

Georgia Department of Education. Georgia K-12 Schools. Retrieved from  https://data.georgiaspatial.org 

Georgia Tech Center for GIS. Metro Atlanta Retailers. Retrieved from  https://data.georgiaspatial.org 

Living in poverty is never easy. But when poverty is concentrated in a specific neighborhood, things can be even worse. 

As a result of this isolation from opportunity, people who live in very poor neighborhoods are more likely than residents of moderately poor or non-poor neighborhoods to drop out of school, become a single or teenaged parent, and receive welfare payments. Living in a very poor neighborhood exacerbates the difficulties of being poor.

It has been proven that having concentrations of poverty in one geographic area unfortunately can trap people into generational poverty through depressed communities, weak schools and few positive role models.

With those being said, expanding coverage of the public transportation is important to improve the well-being of these citizens in the low-income neighborhoods. By connecting these neighborhoods with public transportation, then the distance between people in these neighborhoods and facilities such as hospitals, schools, or even retail stores will matter less as they have better access.