Cleveland Now Nation’s 4th Poorest City

Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Topics: Other, Economy
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Cleveland is no longer the nation's most impoverished big city. But, the latest survey from the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the city still ranks in the top ten. ideastream's David C. Barnett reports.

According to this year’s American Community Survey—released yesterday—Cleveland has slipped down to fourth place among the nation’s poorest big cities.  But, some critics are dubious about the interpretation of these numbers.

Mark Schweitzer: I’m not at all fond of the ranking part of this. 

Mark Schweitzer is an economist with the Federal Reserve.

Mark Schweitzer: If you take a look at the top ten cities—the poorest cities from last year and the poorest cities from this year—you would see that nine out of the ten are exactly the same.  None of these places’ poverty rates are moving by very much.

Schweitzer thinks a more important statistic is the correlation between education and a person’s ability to get out of poverty.  He suggests that local leaders should focus their efforts on promoting high school completion.  David C. Barnett, 90.3.

Additional Information

You can examine the new census numbers for yourself here.