How is Philanthropy Responding to Suburban Poverty?

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeraldimp

The repercussions of suburban poverty have really piqued my curiosity, especially with the implications of this kind of poverty for all of us concerned with older youth. I did a bit more snooping around and found research by Sarah Reckhow and Margaret Weir on how philanthropy is responding to growing suburban poverty. In Building a Stronger Regional Safety Net: Philanthropy's Role published by the Brookings Institute, the authors looked at four metro areas: the Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Detroit regions.

Here are four of their findings:

Suburban community foundations in the four regions studied are newer and smaller than those in core cities, despite faster growth of suburban poor populations. In the regions studied, most suburban community foundations began operating in the 1990s, and have not accumulated significant asset bases. Some larger city-based foundations have taken a regional approach, but face restrictions on the extent to which they can address growing need in poor suburban communities.


The share of foundation dollars targeted to organizations serving low-income residents varies widely across regions, but relatively few of those dollars are devoted to building organizational capacity in the suburbs. Chicago saw the largest share of foundation grant dollars go to organizations serving low-income people (60 percent), while Atlanta posted the lowest share (19 percent). Detroit was the only region where total grants to suburban-based human service providers were relatively comparable to their city-based counterparts.

Suburbs with high rates of poverty have substantially fewer grantees and grant dollars per poor person than either central cities or lower-poverty suburbs. Though metropolitan Atlanta has the highest rate of suburban poverty among the regions studied, it has the lowest rate of suburban grant-making per poor person. Denver’s results are a mirror image of Atlanta’s, with the lowest poverty rate and highest suburban grant-making per poor person.

Four types of strategies to build and strengthen the capacity of the suburban safety net are showing promise in these regions. Each region is engaging in four types of capacity building strategies: supporting existing regional organizations, creating new regional organizations, supporting regional networks, and establishing new suburban community foundations.

This makes me start to wonder about the different ways that poverty has been shifting to the suburbs and the implications for youth. I heard about the issue of suburban poverty over a decade ago, as graduation rates in inner-ring suburbs for some populations were as low as those of Chicago Public Schools. While in California, I learned about developing trends of extended families buying a house to share in the suburbs. This shift allowed families to live in much safer communities with better schools. The recession has also contributed significantly to suburban residents finding themselves impoverished for the first time. Do these trends and dynamics make a difference to youth and their transition to adulthood? It is probably hard for these young people to find a job anywhere if they are competing with their parents and their friends for low-wage, low-skilled jobs. If they can get a job, are schools responding to their need to balance school and work, or are they being forced to choose between them? How much are the racial dynamics the same as in cities?

If you know of any research on this topic, we’d really love to know about it.