Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?

2002/01/01 by Jacob L. Vigdor · 5 citations
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Housing Market and Economics

paper · doi:10.1353/urb.2002.0012

openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/05

Abstract

FOR SEVERAL DECADES, social scientists have tracked the fiscal health of American central cities with some degree of concern. Suburbanization, spawned by technological innovations, consumer preferences, and at least to some extent by government policy, has selectively pulled affluent households out of urban jurisdictions. 1 The leaders of these jurisdictions are left with the prospect of satisfying more concentrated demands for services with a dwindling tax base, realizing that further increasing the burden they place on residents will simply drive more of them away. In the process, cities have become concentrated centers of poverty, joblessness, crime, and other social pathologies. 2

Citations

• Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence
• Geographic variation in change in income inequality among US states, 1970-1990
• Islands of decay in seas of renewal: Housing policy and the resurgence of gentrification
• Crime, Urban Flight, and the Consequences for Cities

Cited by

• The Effects of Gentrification on Neighborhood Public Schools
• Gentrification, Property Tax Limitation, and Displacement
• Gentrification and Community Fabric in Chicago
• Segregation by design local politics and inequality in American cities
• Gentrification [wikipedia]