Census: Buffalo Poverty Rate at 28.7%

Thus making it one of the highest in the nation.

More than one out of four people in Buffalo are poor, according to the latest estimates by the U. S. Census Bureau.

Figures released Tuesday on U. S. income and poverty show Buffalo still has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation — 28.7 percent in 2007.

That compares with 29.9 percent the previous year.

But given the margin of error figured into the estimates, Buffalo’s poverty really hasn’t improved from 2006 to 2007, said Wende A. Mix, an associate professor in the geography and planning department at Buffalo State College. “Statistically,” she said, “there’s no change.”

That also was true nationally, where the poverty rate was 12.5 percent in 2007, according to the Census Bureau report.

Census data released last year on Buffalo’s poverty sparked The Buffalo News to do an on-going series detailing the depths of the city’s poor.

In the report released Tuesday, Detroit’s poverty rate of 33.8 percent was the highest among cities with more than 250,000 people, followed by Cleveland, at 29.5 percent; Buffalo; El Paso, Texas, 27.4; Memphis, 26.2; Miami, 25.5; Milwaukee, 24.4; Newark, 23.9; Philadelphia, 23.8; and Cincinnati, 23.5.

Is Mayor Byron Brown going to write a letter to the Census Bureau now? Perhaps instead of whining when people note the city’s faults, the could take that energy and put it towards doing something to fix the problems.

But, I’m not confident that will happen.