By SAM ROBERTS
June 22, 2006
New York has a smaller share of middle-income families than any other major metropolitan area in the nation, and like residents of most American cities and suburbs, they live in a dwindling number of middle-income neighborhoods, according to a new analysis of census figures released yesterday.
Only Los Angeles has a smaller proportion of middle-income neighborhoods than New York, and not by much.
In metropolitan New York, 16.2 percent of the families and 28.3 percent of the neighborhoods were identified as middle-income.
"Middle-income neighborhoods are vanishing faster than middle-income families," said the nationwide analysis, done by the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The analysis attributed the shrinking number of middle-income communities to, among other factors, gentrification of more marginal neighborhoods and a bunching of high-income families in more homogenous surroundings.
"It sounds like it's a function of changing income distribution," said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "What happened between 1990 and 2000 in metropolitan New York and especially New York City was that the number of really high-income households went up, and low-income went up and the middle shrank."
"What looks like a shrinking middle is partly an upgrading of income," he added.
The hollowing out was most pronounced in Manhattan, where 51 percent of neighborhoods were identified as high-income, 40 percent as low-income and only 8 percent as middle-income. Long Island ranked second only to Scranton with the highest proportion, 65 percent, of middle-income neighborhoods of any metropolitan areas in the nation.
The analysis found "increasing heterogeneity in some neighborhoods," but concluded that "by and large, however, families at either end of the distribution appeared to occupy more economically homogeneous neighborhoods in 2000 than they did in 1970."
In New York City, between 1970 and 2000, the share of neighborhoods classified as lower-income rose to 31 percent from 20 percent, middle-income neighborhoods declined to 30 percent from 42 percent, and higher-income neighborhoods remained almost unchanged, about 38 percent.
"You see a dramatic shift between 1970 and 1980 and then more stability since then, although the proportion of families with so-called middle incomes continues to decline," said Alan Berube, a fellow in the metropolitan policy program at Brookings.
While concentrated poverty, where 40 percent or more of the population live below the poverty line, declined in many areas, those neighborhoods still tended to have incomes far below the median, which was about $42,000 in 2000.
"The share of New York City neighborhoods with very low incomes decreased in the 1990's, from 12.1 to 9.1 percent, and the share with low incomes increased, from 17.8 to 21.6 percent," Mr. Berube said. "This may capture the decline in concentrated poverty, but it did not result in an increase in middle-income neighborhoods."
The decline in the share of New York City middle-income families was smaller than in most other cities, including Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia. The 12-percentage-point drop in the share of New York City neighborhoods classified as middle-income was less than the much steeper declines in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia.
"Queens and Brooklyn actually seem to remain havens for middle-income families," Mr. Berube said. "Moreover, strong immigration to New York City during this period may have helped replenish its stock of moderate-income families and neighborhoods."
The analysis suggests that further changes may have taken place since 2000, but does not quantify them.
"The question is whether, since 2000, housing price gains and gentrification might have 'tipped' lower-income neighborhoods into middle-income status, or middle-income neighborhoods into high-income status," Mr. Berube said. "Just looking at the Greenpoint-Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, it's notable that only 8 of roughly 50 census tracts had median family incomes above the city median in 2000. So here and elsewhere we might see evidence of increasing middle-income neighborhoods by 2010."
Staten Island had the highest percentage of very high-income neighborhoods, 56 percent, of any borough. In the Bronx, 56 percent were classified as low income, with fully 25 percent as very low, defined as less than 50 percent of the median.
Nationwide, the analysis found that middle-income neighborhoods declined in 2000 to 41 percent of all metropolitan neighborhoods, from 58 percent in 1970. In 12 metropolitan areas studied in greater detail, they declined to 23 percent from 45 percent in the central cities. Even in the suburbs, their share shrank to 44 percent from 64 percent.
"Families earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of their metropolitan-area median incomes — what many would consider to be the 'middle class' — shrank from 28 percent of the total in 1970 to less than 22 percent by 2000," according to the analysis, by Jason C. Booza, Jackie Cutsinger and George Galster of Wayne State University for Brookings.
While the growing share of high-income families in some areas could be considered positive, the analysis said, the sharper increase in lower-income families and the decline in middle-income families "overshadowed that good news."
The analysis defined very low income as less than 50 percent of the median in the area studied, low as 50 to 80 percent, high as 120 to 150 percent and very high as more than 150 percent above the median. In the 12 areas studied more thoroughly, moderate income ranged from $59,313 in Atlanta to $72,247 in Washington.
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