Recently, I published a short monograph on suburban poverty with a UW doctoral student, Sarah Charnes Paisner. Our monograph examines the suburbanization of poverty in metropolitan areas with a particular focus on the experience of the United States. Discussion highlights key trends and likely causes of suburban poverty and provides an overview of various attempts to classify heterogeneity across suburbs.

We believe the trends and consequences observed in the United States are relevant to a broad host of global settings, some of which have been struggling with high rates of suburban poverty for some time. The piece closes by identifying gaps in current knowledge related to the suburbanization of poverty and highlighting the implications of the suburbanization of poverty for safety net policy.