Website notes Toledo’s descent into poverty
A website that compiles and publishes bank rates this month published a list of cities that it says are sliding further into poverty, and Toledo ranked 10th on the list of “20 places in America That Are Getting Poorer.”
GoBankingRates.com looked at 82 major cities and used four statistics to assemble its rankings: per capita income from 1969-70, adjusted for inflation, and per capita income in 2017; median household income from 1969-70, adjusted for inflation, and median household income in 2017; population in 1970 and 2017, and poverty rates from 1969-70 and in 2017.
The four factors were scored to determine which cities are “getting poorer,” the website said.
For Toledo, GoBankingRates.com noted a change in per capita income of minus$1,766 over a 47-year period.
It found that the median household income had dropped $25,706 and that Toledo’s population lost 103,607 people since 1970.
The website said Toledo’s poverty rate in 1970 was just 9.2% but it has grown by 17.3% as of 2017 and 26.5% — or a quarter of the city’s population — are living in poverty.
It also adds, “Like many nearby cities, Toledo was impacted by the troubles of U.S. automakers and other domestic industries beginning in the 1970s.”
Ahead of Toledo, or farther below it if poverty is the measurement are No. 9 Buffalo; No. 8 Milwaukee; No. 7 Trenton, N.J.; No. 6 Newark, N.J.; No. 5 Rochester, N.Y.; No. 4 Dayton; No. 3. Hartford; No. 2 Cleveland; and No. 1 Detroit.
But is income, population, and poverty rate the correct way to measure whether a city is getting poorer?
Not according to Bill Adams, a Toledo-based economist with PNC Bank.
“In addition to the usual causes that get named for Toledo’s economic challenges, measuring incomes by looking at median/per capita incomes is going to be heavily influenced by the growing population of retirees, who have lower incomes than households with working-age members,” Mr. Adams said.
“And defining this as ‘Toledo’ versus the ‘Toledo (metropolitan statistical area)’ is going to be heavily affected by the long-term shift of the population out of the city and into the suburbs,” he said.
GoBankingRates.com did acknowledge that looking at only the city data, and not the MSA, made a significant difference.
“A shrinking population is often associated with poverty as more affluent residents leave declining cities and move to the suburbs or other cities with more growth,” it said.
But Adams said it can be misleading to separate the data of a city from that of the entire MSA since the two are intertwined.
“For the income data for the MSA compared with the income data with the city of Toledo itself, it tells a story that’s pretty common across the United States: that over time the population has spread out into the suburbs and smaller towns around the city core,” the economist said.
“The data does show that poverty is a bigger problem — if you just look at Toledo. But that paints a misleading, bleak picture from what’s really going on in the metro area as a whole,” he added.
Adams said he would look at different statistics when judging whether a city was getting poorer. His data would consist of housing prices, average earnings, the poverty rate, and the number of employed persons as a share of the working-age population.
He also would lean towards the MSA statistics and shy away from Toledo-only.
For the MSA, the average annual income adjusted for inflation has gone from $20,520 in 1970 to $43,505, which is a 112% increase.
The housing price index for the Toledo MSA has risen from $58,020 in October 1978 to $162,090 this past January, which is an increase of 179%.
The number of employed persons in the metro area as of 1990 was 288,970. That has fluctuated over the years but through this past June it was at 289,050, which is up just .02%.
Meanwhile, the poverty rate for the metro area is now at 17.8%. “It’s still really high, but not as high as the city as a whole.
Adams also noted that the poverty rate for the Toledo MSA was 10.2% in 1979, 9.2% in 1969, and 14.8% in 1959.
Wendy Pestrue, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Toledo, said the organization is seeing a heavier call volume on its 211 helpline service, “but that may have more to do with greater awareness.”
Mrs. Pestrue there are issues in the city of Toledo that need addressing and could be viewed as the city getting poorer — like struggling families needing financial counseling.
“But I don’t think it’s the case. And it’s not like it’s just Toledo vs. the metropolitan area. That’s not very fair to the region,” she said.
Nikki Morey, communications director for Toledo’s Cherry Street Mission, said the charity doesn’t pay much attention to poverty rates, annual incomes, or population rates.
It is more concerned with benefits and housing for the poor and how many people are seeking assistance of various kinds from the mission.
And those at the mission do not sense that Toledo is getting poorer.
“As far as an increase or decrease in services, the vast majority of demand remains flat,” Morey said.
“However, in the last maybe 10 years, the Cherry Street Mission has been making some significant moves in redefining poverty and how to be proactive to the problem or how to provide better solutions.”
Morey said the mission has begun defining poverty more broadly than traditional stats and figures.
“Stats and figures can only quantify a job or a house and where your income is versus your debt,” she said.
The mission sees poverty as someone “who comes to our doors and has no job, no house, or no income.”
Poverty, Morey said, “just isn’t for the guy you see shuffling down the street with his cardboard sign.” It is affecting all walks of life.
“If we were to add any hypothesis to the changing face in poverty, it’s the opioid addiction demographic and that Toledo’s on the highway of sex trafficking,” she said.