Three of the five metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of very poor people in 2010 were in Texas.

On Monday, December 12, 2011, the USA celebrates the 220th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights and the highest concentration of extreme poverty since the Great Depression!!! How’s that for progress?


US taxpayers (Citizens not corporate taxes) help pay for $10 billion in government subsidies to the oil, coal and natural gas industries each year.

The number of Americans living in neighborhoods beset by extreme poverty surged in the last decade with the poorest areas growing more than twice as fast in suburbs as in cities.

At least 2.2 million more Americans, a 33 percent jump since 2000, live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is 40 percent or higher, according to a study released today by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

When people are concentrated in very poor neighborhoods, they face a host of additional problems from worse schools and fewer job opportunities to poor health, she said.

The report follows the release of data by the Census Bureau in September that showed the number of people living in poverty was the highest in the 52 years since the agency began gathering the statistic. U.S. household income fell to its lowest level in more than a decade in 2010 and poverty rose to a 17-year high.

Extreme poverty doubled in Midwestern metropolitan areas from 2000 to the period of 2005-2009 and rose by a third in the South, according to the report.

In another reflection of the impact of the slump, those living in extremely poor neighborhoods in the latter half of the decade were increasingly likely to be white with a college or high school education, homeowners, and not receiving public assistance, the Brookings report said.

Three of the five metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of very poor people in 2010 were in Texas. The College Station-Bryan metro area, home to Texas A&M University, had the greatest concentration of very poor people in the nation, with 16.4 percent of its residents earning less than half the federal poverty rate.

It was trailed by the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area, where 16.2 percent of people live on less than half the poverty level; Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, with 15.7 percent; and Brownsville-Harlingen, with 15.6 percent.