Where the Poorest Americans Live

In 2003, what was then the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (now the Metropolitan Policy Program) issued the report "Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems." In it, Paul Jargowsky revealed a dramatic reversal of a trend he had chronicled in his landmark 1997 book, Poverty and Place. After roughly doubling in the 1970s and 1980s, the population of extremely poor neighborhoods - those in which at least 40 percent of residents lived below the federal poverty line - dropped by one-fourth in the 1990s.

The report earned headlines suggesting that a problem that was once thought intractable could, in the right sort of economy and with the right sorts of housing and income policies, diminish over time. With fewer poor people exposed to the negative effects of these neighborhoods like low-performing schools, higher crime, poor public health, limited access to jobs and services, the opportunity to reduce poverty seemed more within reach.