Washington’s suburbs are seeing pockets of increasing poverty as immigrant populations concentrate there, creating melting pots of diversity. Meanwhile, D.C.’s poverty divisions have remained relatively stagnant over the last decade, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures.
The reason, experts say, is because the Washington suburbs are now where immigrants and first-generation Americans believe they have the best shot at climbing the economic ladder. In essence, the District’s black-white divide doesn’t leave room for anyone else.
“When you’re in the city, it feels far more like you’re trapped in these circumstances,” said Larry Shinagawa, director of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland. “And there’s a lot of segregation and a tremendous amount of feeling [that] there would be a tension between immigrant groups.”
| Diversity and poverty in D.C. suburbs | ||||
| Aspen Hill | Wheaton | Langley Park | Annandale | |
| Hispanic/Latino* | 22.3% | 35.4% | 74.7% | 19.2% |
| White | 51.6% | 42.8% | 21.6% | 65.2% |
| Black | 21.8% | 19.4% | 17.1% | 7.5% |
| Asian | 10.7% | 12.8% | 2.3% | 19.6% |
| Living in poverty | 9% | 10% | 19% | 5.8% |
| *OFF ANY RACE: SOURCE: AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY 2005-2009 | ||||
Over the last decade, relative poverty has increased in parts of Montgomery, Prince George’s and Fairfax counties as the Hispanic population there has grown. In Montgomery, poverty is concentrated highest in the Wheaton and Aspen Hill neighborhoods, where roughly 9 percent of the residents live under the poverty line. The county average is 5 percent.
A family of four earning less than $22,130 in 2009 lives in poverty, according to federal guidelines.
In Prince George’s, the highest concentration is in the Langley Park area, where roughly 19 percent of residents live in poverty, nearly double the county’s average rate. In Northern Virginia, poverty is lower, but concentrated in the Annandale area, where roughly 6 percent of residents live below the threshold.
All three communities have increased their Hispanic population and decreased the concentration of white residents over the last 10 years. Other races have remained proportionally the same on average.
Southeast D.C. still has the highest poverty level of any community, with 30 percent of its residents living below the threshold, according to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data. But unlike the suburbs, the poverty is concentrated among blacks.
More than 94 percent of the District’s residents across the Anacostia River are black, up several percentage points from the average in 2000, when more blacks lived in Northeast. Poverty in 2000 was still the heaviest across the river.
Audrey Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said the suburbs have become more affordable.
“We’ve seen poverty rates increase especially in the recession, but they also are on the rise in the suburbs much faster than in the city,” she said.
In Langley Park, poverty has increased with diversity. About three-quarters of residents are Hispanic, up from 63 percent in 2000. Ten years ago, 17 percent lived in poverty; today 19 percent do.
Wheaton and Aspen Hill are similar — the biggest population increase over 10 years was in the concentration of Hispanics. Now more than one-fifth of Aspen Hill’s residents and one-third of Wheaton’s are Hispanic. Both saw poverty rates increase several percentage points during the decade.
In Annandale, the Hispanic population increased to more than 19 percent, almost matching the Asian population there. However, poverty dropped by more than a percentage point over the decade, though it is still above the county average of 5 percent.
That could be attributed to Annandale’s more established foreign-born community of Vietnamese and Korean entrepreneurs. According to Shinagawa, the businesses there tend to hire other immigrants, contracting the growing Hispanic work force. It’s also a prevalent trend in Maryland.
Unless D.C.’s social patterns drastically change in the coming years, the suburbs will continue to grow as the gateway to the immigrant population.
“In some ways the suburbs are becoming more like cities and the cities becoming more like suburbs,” Singer said.
