Indianapolis – Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.
In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a Brookings Institution study out today.
It found that as a share of urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.
The decline of middle-income neighborhoods may also be a consequence of increased economic opportunity and residential mobility, especially for upper-income minorities, said Joel Kotkin, an urban historian and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
“This is about upward mobility and class. Until the 1970s, middle-class blacks and other minorities often had little choice about where they could live,” said Kotkin, the author of “The City: A Global History.”
He added: “They usually had to live close to lower-income people of their own race. Now, if they can afford it, they can move to higher-income neighborhoods. Dollars trump race. Many choose not to live around poor people.”
Widening income inequality in the United States has been well documented in recent years, but the Brookings analysis of census data uncovered a much more accelerated decline in communities that house the middle class.
It far outpaced the 7 percentage-point decline between 1970 and 2000 in the proportion of middle-income families living in and around cities.
Middle-income neighborhoods – where families earn 80 to 120 percent of the local median income – have plunged by more than 20 percent as a share of all neighborhoods in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. It’s happening, too, in this prosperous, mostly white middle-income Midwestern city where unemployment is low and a vibrant downtown has been preserved. As poor and rich neighborhoods proliferate, the share of middle-income neighborhoods in greater Indianapolis has dropped by 21 percent since 1970.
“No city in America has gotten more integrated by income in the last 30 years,” said Alan Berube, an urban demographer at Brookings who worked on the report.
“It means that if you are not living in one of the well-off areas, you are not going to have access to the same amenities – good schools and safe environment – that you could find 30 years ago,” he said.
