The most recent recession has had a devastating impact on some of New York City’s most vulnerable populations. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, since 2008 the number of people living below the federal poverty level in New York City grew by more than 120,000, to over 1.6 million in 2010. Also in 2010, one in three of the City’s children lived in poverty up from one in four just two years prior.

For many of New York City’s poor, the daily struggle to meet their basic needs is compounded by living in overwhelmingly poor neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, communal resources are scarce and residents often face other significant obstacles to prosperity, such as a dearth of employment and educational opportunities, high crime rates, and poor housing quality. To better understand the scale and impact of this issue, Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, Inc. (CCC) conducted an analysis of New York City neighborhood-level poverty data. Our findings suggest that despite a decline in the number of extreme-poverty neighborhoods and the share of people who live in them, concentrated poverty continues to be a serious problem for many communities.