The Cleveland-Elyria metro area has the sixth highest concentrated poverty rate in the U.S., according to financial news Website 247wallst.com in an article titled “Cities Hit Hardest by Extreme Poverty.”
Concentrated poverty is defined as neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40% or more.
Cleveland’s 27.0% concentrated poverty rate is the highest in Ohio — narrowly edging out Toledo — and sixth highest of any metro area in the country.
The number of people living below the poverty line in Cleveland climbed from 294,000 in 2011 to 301,000 in 2017. The growing ranks of poor metro area residents pushed the concentrated poverty rate up by 1.2 percentage points during a period when concentrated poverty declined by 1.6 percentage points nationwide. The number of Cleveland neighborhoods where at least 40% of the population lives below the poverty line climbed from 76 to 86 between 2011 and 2017.
Undergoing steep economic and population decline in the latter half of the 20th century with the fall of American manufacturing, Cleveland is a classic Rust Belt city. A shadow of its former self, Cleveland proper is now home to fewer than 400,000 people, down from a peak of nearly 1 million in 1950.
24/7 Wall St.’s Cities Hit Hardest by Extreme Poverty
1. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX metro area
2. Fresno, CA
3. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metro area
4. Memphis, TN
5. Bakersfield, CA
6. Cleveland-Elyria, OH metro area
7. Toledo, OH
8. Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY metro area
9. Jackson, MS
10. Springfield, MA
11. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI metro area
12. Syracuse, NY
13. Rochester, NY
14. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD metro area
15. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ metro area
16. Cincinnati, OH metro area
17. El Paso, TX
18. New York, NY tri-state metro area
19. Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ metro area
20. Tucson, AZ
21. Winston-Salem, NC
22. Columbus, OH
Click HERE for detailed information on all 22 cities hit the hardest by extreme poverty.
The cities on this list are not necessarily the poorest cities in the country. Several, including Cincinnati, New York, and Philadelphia, actually have a lower poverty rate than the U.S. as a whole. They are, however, the most economically segregated cities in the country.
To identify the 40 cities with the worst diets, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the metro areas where less than 60% of adults reported eating a healthy diet all day, according to Gallup and Sharecare’s 2016 Community Rankings for Healthy Eating report. Population and median household income data was obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey. Obesity rates and percentage of adults reporting fair or poor health came from the 2019 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program.
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