People in disadvantaged neighborhoods have seen unhappy days from, despair, poverty, violence, crime, drugs, sub par schools, and everything else the slums of America has to endure. These neighborhoods won’t be getting better anytime soon, because the rich are moving into wealthy enclaves. They are taking their money and businesses to suburban areas. This leaves other neighborhoods in shambles because there is little money being generated in the neighborhood to restore them.
A new study from Stanford University show a dramatic increase in neighborhoods rated as affluent with had over half the families making over $112,500. Poor neighborhoods had over half their families making under $50,000. In 1970, by contrast, only one in seven American families lived in neighborhoods that rated as segregated rich or poor. In that same year, 65 percent of Americans lived in neighborhoods where over half the resident families rated as middle income. By 2007, that share of Americans living in middle-class neighborhoods had dropped to 44 percent.
Today the middle class is in decline. The social classes that are representing America are the upper class, (the rich) and the lower class (the poor). The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. This is very problematic for people in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and this leads to increased crime rates.
Being apart of these wealthy enclaves lead to people knowing less and less about people not like themselves, and a mentality that embraces stereotypes. One stereotype is that the people in those poor economic conditions are “lazy.”
Title: Class Segregation: Rich Hunker Down in Wealthy Enclaves — Leaving the Rest of America’s Neighborhoods to Deteriorate
Source: Alternet, November 27, 2011Author: Sam Pizzigati
URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153213/class_segregation%3A_rich_hunker_down_in_wealthy_enclaves_–_leaving_the_rest_of_america%27s_neighborhoods_to_deteriorate
Growth in the Residential Segregation of Families by Income: 1979-2009, Stanford University, November 2011, Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff
Student Researcher: Joshua Nervis, Sonoma State University
Faculty Advisor: Cynthia Boaz, Sonoma State University