Poverty in Upstate Metropolitan Areas – Characteristics and Change: 1999-2013

This is a paper based partly on data previously presented on this blog site. This paper examines the incidence of poverty in upstate New York cities compared to the surrounding suburbs. The data shows that while residents of upstate suburbs enjoy incomes that are substantially higher than the national average and poverty rates that are […]

The Shrinking Middle Class in New York State – Cities and Suburbs

Pew Research has been releasing a series of studies showing that the percentage of Americans who have middle class incomes has been declining. The most recent of these is America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas. The report received extensive coverage in many newspapers, including the New York Times. It concluded that […]

Racial Divisions in Upstate Metropolitan Neighborhoods

In my last posting I described income differences in 800 upstate metropolitan neighborhoods in Albany, Erie, Monroe, Oneida, Onondaga, Rensselaer and Schenectady Counties. The data comes from the United States Census Bureau which divides the nation into census tracts, the most detailed level publically tabulated. Overall, there are 73,000 census tracts nationally, averaging 4,200 residents each. […]