Paul A. Jargowsky found that “concentrated poverty” (people living in high-poverty neighborhoods) declined by 24 percent in the United States in 1990’s. In contrast, he says that from 1970 to 1990 poverty became more concentrated spatially.

Based on the trend of prior decades, one might have reasonably assumed that high-poverty neighborhoods were an unavoidable aspect of urban life and would continue to grow inexorably in size and population. The latest evidence contradicts this gloomy assessment.

For Discussion. The author reports that the steepest declines in concentrated poverty occurred in the Midwest and the South. Could that be explained by the relatively lower rate of foreign immigration into those regions?