A new book, Places in Need, explores how preconceptions make harder to combat suburban poverty Lake County, Illinois, located north of Chicago, is considered one of the wealthier parts of the large belt of suburbs that surround the Midwestern metropolis. It?s long been seen, by itself and others, as well-off, successful section of suburbia, popularized in John Hughes films such as Ferris Bueller?s Day Off, and filled with good school districts and cozy culs-de-sac.
It?s also, in many ways, a poster child for the under-examined rise in suburban poverty chronicled in a new book, Places in Need. Despite its reputation, the county has seen the number of people in deep poverty (incomes less than half the federal poverty threshold) double since 1990. It?s one of many stretches of suburbia that, especially in the wake of the Great Recession, has been grappling with a growing poverty issues without the benefit of the same social safety net set up in cities. ?Suburbs are set up to be more exclusive communities,? says Scott Allard, a professor at the University of Washington, a Brookings Institute fellow, and the author of this new look at shifts in U.S. poverty. ?They?re smaller in nature, people don?t spend as much time in different regions of the suburbs, and the living experience is very different than cities. This all makes it much easier for people to live their daily lives unaware of the concentrated poverty in their areas.?
Allard spent years studying Census data and ...