Nearly every US metro area is poorer than in 2000

The opening decade of the 21st century was the first census decade on record in which real median household income declined, a Brookings Institution analysis reveals.

"Nearly all (91) of the 100 largest metro areas ended the decade with lower median incomes than in 2000," Brookings reported in a compilation of the five most important findings to emerge from its State of Metropolitan America analyses over the past year. 

Among the results summarized in a report assembled by WilliamFrey, Alan Berube, Audrey Singer, and Jill Wilson are these:

Sun Belt areas on the front lines of the housing market collapse (Orlando, Las Vegas, Riverside), manufacturing metros (Indianapolis, Cleveland), and many parts of the Southeast (Birmingham, Nashville) ranked among the places experiencing large poverty increases during, and sometimes even before, the Great Recession. Suburbs shared much more in the rise of metropolitan poverty, with their poor residents growing 53 percent over the decade, a shift driven partly by the suburban growth of new immigrant populations.

The typical household earned $50,046 in 2010, down 8.9 percent from 2000. And the share of people living in poverty hit 15.3 percent, the highest level since 1993. The negative trends surely reflect the deep recession affecting the country in the late 2000s, but also the limited progress experienced by average households and the poor during the years in which the overall economy grew.

Other findings:

• The century's opening decade exhibited the slowest growth of any decade in the US in 70 years. The 9.7 percent population increase compared to a 13.2 percent rise in the 1990s and a peak rise of 18.5 percent in the 1950s. The slowest before the 2000s was the 7.3 percent growth rate of the 1930s.

"Suburbs continued to grow faster than cities," Brookings said. "However, many of these patterns began to shift in the late 2000s amid a housing market crash that hit fast-growing Sun Belt and outer suburban locations especially hard."

• The proportion of US residents moving during a year "dropped to a postwar low of 11.9 percent in 2008, and then again to 11.6 percent in 2011." The analysts noted: "One upshot is that population losses from many [of the Sun Belt's] former 'feeder' areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston have slowed considerably, especially among migrants with college degrees."

• Non-whites, especially Hispanics and Asians, accounted for the overwhelming majority (92 percent) of U.S. population growth in the 2000s. In the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, whites now account for 57 percent of population, down from 71 percent in 1990. 

"In 2010, minorities made up more than half the population in 22 large metro areas, up from 14 in 2000 and just five in 1990," the report said.

• "America’s 45-and-over population grew more than 18 times as fast as its under-45 population in the 2000s, and more than half the nation’s voting-age population is at least 45 years old. ... Under-45 populations in 36 of the largest 100 metro areas, particularly places like Buffalo and Cleveland, declined in the 2000s even as they rose by at least 10 percent in 29 metro areas like Raleigh and Las Vegas."

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