U.S. losing its middle-class neighborhoods

Metro areas show widening gap between rich and poor sections:

INDIANAPOLIS - Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.

In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a Brookings Institution study released today. It found that as a share of all urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation's 100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.

Widening income inequality in the United States has been well documented in recent years, but the Brookings analysis of census data uncovered a much more accelerated decline in communities that house the middle class. It far outpaced the seven percentage-point decline between 1970 and 2000 in the proportion of middle-income families living in and around cities.

Story continues below ↓
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447899/

The death of the middle class will be the death of the USA and democracy.

milestone. He has reduced middle class neighborhood down to less than 50%. His base, the haves and have mores, rub their hands in glee.