The tale of two Michigans: Map reveals rampant poverty and wealth side by side

A newly released study by the Urban Institute has produced an info-map that displays U.S. inequality – based on income and other quality-of-life factors -- in a fascinating and disturbing way that Americans have never seen before.

By mapping out the nation’s richest and poorest neighborhoods – broadly speaking – the analysis of U.S. Census data shows that those at the top and those at the bottom often live nearly next to one another, with the well-off in the suburbs and the poor living in the cities.

All across Michigan, the proximity of rich and poor is evident.

The Detroit area presents a prime example, as the map above shows. The blue areas indicate locations where the populace lives among the top 10 percent, in terms of socioeconomic status. The black marks on the map are areas that fall into the bottom 10 percent.

Notice how poverty in Mount Clemens, Pontiac, Oak Park and Detroit lies adjacent to, or close to, the Top  10 Percent areas -- vast swaths of territory in western Wayne County and central and northern Oakland County.

In Macomb County, the story is much different. Only a small section of northeast Shelby Township falls within the top 10 percent territory and only two tiny areas are in the bottom 10 percent.

If you click on a larger version of the Urban Institute map, you will see that relative wealth and poverty exist side-by-side throughout much of Michigan – in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Mount Pleasant, Midland, Jackson, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek.  

Clearly, Michiganders are accustomed to cities having good and bad neighborhoods, but the idea that those closely connected boroughs represent the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent is surely news to all of us.  

The Urban Institute study by Rolf Pendall and Carl Hedman relied on data from census tracts, the smallest pieces of geography for which  the Census Bureau provides details. In most of the country, census tracts are essentially neighborhoods though in the sparsely populated regions of the West, they can consist of many square miles.  

This analysis went beyond average household income in each tract. The study constructed a single socioeconomic score that also captures the homeownership rate, the median home value and the share of people with college degrees. According to The Washington Post, the top 10 percent of census tracts do well on all of these fronts. They have high incomes, expensive houses, broad homeownership and lots of college grads. The lowest ranked tracts, conversely, do poorly in all of these ways.

Here’s how the Post’s Wonkblog described the study results:

“The inequality between tracts at the top and bottom is particularly stark around Baltimore, Columbus, Dallas, Houston and Philadelphia (and Detroit). And the particular spatial patterns in these regions look familiar: Invariably, the most distressed places are in the inner city, the most affluent in the suburbs.
“That picture, which comes from a new analysis and nationwide map by the Urban Institute, shows inequality in a stark new light. It is not merely an economic phenomenon but a geographic one, too. It exists not just between households at the top and bottom, but between neighborhoods a few miles apart.

“… Despite all of the attention given to newly gentrifying neighborhoods and growing suburban poverty, these maps show that the predominant pattern remains the same as it's been for decades: poverty in the city and wealth in the suburbs.

“Look across time (1990, 2000 and 2010), and neighborhoods at the top and bottom are remarkably stable. Deeply poor places tend to stay that way, but so do incredibly wealthy ones. And they do that by design, often through housing and zoning policies that keep out more affordable apartments and rental housing (these are the kinds of policies that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy singled out as violations of fair housing last week).”