YOUNGSTOWN Poverty study misinterprets census data, local experts say

The study shows a decline in the number of people living in high-poverty areas.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A study shows that the Youngstown-Warren area experienced one of the largest declines in the nation of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods.
Overall, the area had the 21st largest decline, a 15.8 percent drop from the 1990 census to the 2000 census, according to a study commissioned by The Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The study, "Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems: The Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the 1990s," also shows that Hispanics in the Valley had the fourth largest decline, 45.6 percent, in the nation in their concentrated poverty rate, and blacks in the area had the seventh largest decline, 40.5 percent, in the nation in their concentrated poverty rate.
The study says only 7,582 people live in high-poverty areas in the Valley, compared with 35,651 in 1990.
So is poverty on the decline in the Valley?
Not at all, say local experts.
Different interpretation
Actually, poverty is increasing, the experts say, and they use the same 1990 and 2000 censuses as evidence.
In 1990, there were 51,382 people in poverty in the Youngstown-Warren area; in 2000, there were 54,116 people in poverty in the region, those respective censuses show.
"They didn't have a clue as to how to interpret census data," said Tom Finnerty, associate director of Youngstown State University's Center for Urban and Regional Studies. "We would have flunked if we turned in something like this."
The study states that the population of Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods, considered to be areas where 40 percent or more of its residents are classified as poor using the federal poverty standard, has declined by 24 percent, or 2.5 million people between 1990 and 2000. The study contends that the census data show a striking reversal of two decades of soaring increases in concentrated poverty.
Paul A. Jargowsky, the author of the report and the director of the Bruton Center for Development Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, says the excellent economy of the 1990s is largely responsible for the decline in the national concentrated poverty rate. He cautions that the recent economic downturn and weakening state of many older suburbs indicate that the trend may reverse once again in the future.
People are relocating
But Jay Williams, director of Youngstown's Community Development Agency, says concentrated poverty decreased in the Mahoning Valley because a number of people living in highly concentrated areas of poverty moved to other less impoverished areas while others simply left the area entirely. Youngstown, which has a high poverty rate, lost 14.3 percent of its population between 1990 and 2000, the most of any large city in Ohio.
Finnerty agreed.
"The study doesn't take into account that people are emptying out of cities like Youngstown," he said. "They're moving out of [high-poverty neighborhoods] and moving to the next neighborhood or into another community. Things aren't all that much better."
'Very misleading'
Gil Peterson, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments' director of economic development and former head of YSU's Center for Urban and Regional Studies, says the institution's study gives people the wrong impression that poverty is decreasing.
"What they're showing is very misleading," he said.
The study states there are only six high-poverty census tracts in the Youngstown-Warren area, compared with 19 in 1990.
"Is poverty decreasing? Not by any stretch of measurement that I can tell," Williams said. "Poverty is shifting. It's misleading to say poverty has decreased."
A walk through the Valley would show that the number of people living in poverty increased during the last decade, Peterson and Williams said. To contend that poverty is decreasing is to defy logic, Peterson said.
"If you take absolute numbers, we've got more poverty in our area," Peterson said.
The institution's study also states that concentrated poverty in the Sharon, Pa., area decreased by 4.7 percent between 1990 and 2000, and that only 2,407 people live in high-poverty areas in that region. The report states that the concentrated poverty rate for blacks dropped by 30.2 percent, but increased by 25.8 percent for Hispanics in the Sharon area.
skolnick@vindy.com