Need Should Not Be Defined by Where Someone Lives

Administrators of public funds as well as private philanthropists want to get the most out of their dollars, so they often look for concentrations high-need populations and work to establish programs in those places.  However, I believe that focusing on geographic concentrations of need when designing and delivering human services may not be the best strategy.  In fact, it could be exactly the wrong strategy for today’s communities. 

I have been a planner and strategist in DuPage County for many years, and I have seen dramatic changes in the economy and the demographics of the county.  DuPage has historically been characterized as a wealthy county with a small low-income population.  While it is true that its poverty rate (the percent of the population living below the poverty line) is one of the lowest in Illinois (only two counties are lower), DuPage does not have a small low-income population.  The reality is that it ranks second, behind Cook County, in the total number of persons below poverty (albeit a distant second, which is another issue to be discussed at some other time).  To be precise, the number in poverty in DuPage is 59,730 according the U.S. Census 2010 American Community Survey.  So, you can see that DuPage is near the bottom of Illinois counties in terms of its poverty rate but near the top when considering the number of people in poverty, and it is often overshadowed by the big numbers in Cook County.  The result is that it has been a struggle to get policy makers to pay attention to the poor in DuPage.  And, if you are poor in DuPage, your needs are often overlooked.

Here are some numbers.  Looking statewide, the 10 poorest counties in Illinois, as measured by poverty rate, are generally downstate with small total populations.  Even though their poverty rates are very high (the highest county rate is 30%, with an average for all ten counties of 21%), these counties collectively account for only 6% of the state’s total poverty population.  Funding policies that favor places where the poverty rate is high will send an inordinate amount of resources to these areas.  From another perspective, the 10 counties with the highest numbers of persons in poverty are, for the most part, near urban centers with five in the Chicago metropolitan area.  These 10 counties include over 73% of the state’s poverty population.  Of course, this top 10 is dominated by Cook County with nearly half of the state’s poverty population.  Interestingly, only Champaign County appears on both lists (being the largest county on the “rate” list and the smallest county on the “number” list).  What this means statewide is that, if you emphasize the top 10 places with high poverty rates, you will be ignoring the needs of 94% of the state’s poverty population.  If you emphasize top 10 places with high numbers, you will capture far more of the poverty population, but the poorest places in Illinois will be de-emphasized.    

The work of the DuPage Federation focuses mostly on DuPage County and parts of Western Cook County, and here are some facts that make a similar but more local point.  Of the 67 municipalities in this area, the top 13 in terms of poverty rates (13 happens to be the number that have rates over 10%) account for only 36% of the poverty population in the DuPage/West Cook area.  If we select the top 13 in terms of the numbers of persons in poverty, we are not much more inclusive.  This list still only includes 46% of the total poverty population of the area.  But it’s not like we are adding 10% to the 36% in the “rate” group to add up to 46%.  The “numbers” group is a different list of municipalities.  There is some overlap between the two lists, but there are important differences.  The “rate” list includes 10 West Cook communities and 3 DuPage communities, but the “numbers” group has only 5 West Cook communities and 8 in DuPage.  So, regardless of whether you emphasize local rates or local numbers as indicators of need, you are missing the majority of the population in need – and you are missing a different group of people with either strategy.    

It is clear that we need to address the high poverty rates in southern Illinois, and we must address the needs of the large numbers of the poor in Chicago.  But the numbers of poor people in both rural and urban areas are not growing.  The numbers of low-income persons in the suburbs, however, are growing.  Even if we choose to focus on these growing suburban needs, if we do it in a way that concentrates resources on a few communities with high poverty rates or numbers, we are affecting only a small portion of the need.   Consequently, we have to ask ourselves if we are really making the difference we think we are by focusing on limited geography.

I believe there is a better way to define what it means to “make a difference” so that we avoid this problem.  One general strategy would be to develop programs that can be made available everywhere or at least on a wide scale.  Such programs provide services in large geographic areas to anyone who qualifies. Of course, there are many kinds of programs like this, but measuring improvements in the population has been hard to do.  Consequently, some feel that these programs are spread too thin and can’t make enough of a difference on a population scale.  However, we can measure population outcomes by measuring individual improvements and aggregating to a large scale.  Newer data systems that are currently being developed (or new uses of some that are already in place) could allow us to aggregate the improvements of individuals into statements about population improvement. 

A second general strategy would be to emphasize widespread replication of localized programs.  This approach recognizes that some programs have to be developed and implemented at the local level if they are going to be successful.  The key to this strategy would be to emphasize success, learning from the experience, and replication.  We can show improvement, and we don’t necessarily have to emphasize tackling the most difficult localities first. 

Neither of these general strategies are new ideas, and they are being employed to some degree already.  But, I believe that more emphasis should be placed on this issue of inclusiveness.  Policies and programs should be designed to specifically account for the fact that people of all economic backgrounds live in a much wider range of places than in the past.  In fact, many low-income persons are specifically choosing to live in higher-income areas like the suburbs where there are more economic and educational opportunities.  If some of this new population requires a little support, we don’t want to deny it just because there aren’t enough other low-income people living around them.