The incidence of economic stress in affluent areas: devising more accurate measures

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1994 by Leonard Gaines, Pearl M. Kamer

This methodology identified a total of sixty-one census tracts on Long Island in which significant levels of economic stress existed. The very low income census tracts collectively contained 18,612 households with incomes below 50% of their respective county median household incomes. The low-to-moderate income census tracts contained 43,945 households with incomes below 80% of their respective county medians.

Since the average household size on Long Island is about 3.3 persons, approximately 206,000 persons resided in presumably distressed households within areas defined as containing significant economic stress. This finding assumes that poor and non-poor families are approximately the same size, a questionable assumption. In fact, the literature suggests that poor families tend to be larger in size than more affluent families. Therefore, the estimate that 206,000 Long Island residents were living in poverty in 1989 probably understates the case. Nevertheless, this figure is almost double the number of Long Island residents, 108,600, defined as living in poverty by the 1990 census.|5~ The results of the alternate methodology are summarized in Tables 4 and 5. The alternate methodology appears to provide a broader and more accurate measure of economic distress because it includes not only those who are officially defined as poor but also those whose incomes are above the poverty line but are not sufficiently high to allow them to live comfortably in a high- cost area such as Long Island.

Table 3 (Continued)

CENSUS TRACTS WITH 10%  OF POPULATION IN POVERTY
               Suffolk
  Census          Persons in   % of Tract
  Tract           Poverty      Population

  1112.01             446          14.9
  1224.03             268          11.7
  1224.05             356          10.3
  1224.06             956          22.9
  1225.01             653          19.9
  1233.01             641          10.2
  1233.02             278          16.7
  1455                251          47.7
  1456.03             856          16.8
  1459.02             742          12.0
  1460.01             533          14.3
  1461.04             361          12.2
  1462.03             692          20.0
  1462.06             263          12.5
  1464.03             636          14.3
  1472                609          12.2
  1473                698          12.2
  1580.07             323          46.5
  1587 05             524          22.6
  1591 03           1,351          28.3
  1594 06             303          12.0
  1595 04             881          11.7
  1595 06             672          10.9
  1595 07             473          11.8
  1595.08             666          10.5
  1698                789          16.5
  1701.01             241          11.9
  1904.01             706          12.9
  1904.02             201          13.3
  1907.05             304          11.3
Total Suffolk      16,673
Total Nas./Suf.    28,055

Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 1990 Census of Population and Housing. Summary
Tape File 3, New York. Washington, D.C.1992.