According to the freshly released 2013 ACS by the United States Census Bureau, there have been modest, but insignificant, gains toward alleviating poverty within many urban areas.
The U.S. Census Bureau accounts for cities based on specific Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which is the agglomeration throughout a given metropolitan area, capturing not only the main big-city or mid-sized city, but also its surrounding suburbs. As Alexis Stephens reports from Next City's Equity Factor blog, "the MSAs that showed reasonable gains in median income were Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, New York-Newark-Jersey City, and San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward. (The median income for the country in 2013 was $51,939, up from $51,759 in 2012.) The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia MSA had the largest decrease in median household income, down 3.8 percent."
These changes may be a rise in overall income of residents of the area, but it may also reflect how many lower-income households are priced out of living within the city, and displaced by higher income individuals. Indeed, looking at the national poverty rate, in 2013 it barely budged and remained at 15.8 percent nationwide. As Stephens writes, "any gains made overall during the recovery haven’t been able to markedly lift the households of low-wage workers or the unemployed."
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