A growing number of Americans entered into poverty last year. But certain cities survived the recession with especially low poverty rates.
Across metropolitan America, poverty rates vary widely, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Indeed, the city with the highest poverty rate and that with the lowest are separated by a full 25 percentage points. The report examined poverty levels in areas with more than 500,000 people last year.
Some cities with the lowest poverty rates are also known for having large numbers of highly wealthy people, although the relationship is less than exact. New York and Los Angeles, for example, are two cities with the greatest number of individuals worth $30 million or more, according to a report from Wealth-X, which tracks the preferences of the ultra-wealthy around the globe, yet the two fail to make the Census Bureau's list of cities with the lowest poverty rates.
Boston and Washington D.C., however, have poverty rates well below the national average of 15.1 percent in 2010, at 10.3 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively. At the same time the cities ranked ninth and fifth on Wealth-X's list of cities with the most ultra-wealthy.
In general, highest-poverty cities tend to be found in southern cities, low-poverty cities in the North, a trend mirrored at the state level. Speficially, seven out of the 10 cities with the lowest poverty rates are located in the Northeast.
Here are 10 large metropolitan areas with the lowest poverty rates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau:
