America's suburbs, an election battleground, now more diverse, home to
lots of working women
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[August 18, 2020]
By Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's suburbs
were key to Donald Trump winning the presidency in 2016, and he and his
2020 Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, are battling for votes there ahead
of the Nov. 3 election.
The Republican president highlighted his focus with recent comments
about "suburban housewives welcoming his protection and a Wall
Street Journal column on Sunday that warned of a "dystopian
vision" of low-income housing.
U.S. suburbs were initially well-defined white enclaves on the edge of
cities when they sprang up during the post-World War Two baby boom . The
families that lived in them were often structured around a single income
- the man's - and a single caretaker - the woman.
While it is hard to characterize a country as diverse as the United
States, or even to define what a "suburb" is anymore, the neighborhoods
within commuting distance to a major U.S. city look very different
today.
They have become more dense, more diverse and less centered on nuclear
families. About 36% of the U.S. population now lives in a county that is
classified as a suburb under a rubric developed by William Frey at the
Brookings Institution, up from 33% in 2000.
DIVERSITY
Suburban counties still tend to be whiter than the rest of the country,
while U.S. cities are more diverse.
But the overall racial makeup of the major suburban counties is close to
that of the country as a whole, based on Frey's classification.
In the Wall Street Journal column Trump co-authored with Housing
Secretary Ben Carson, they stated that a majority of Blacks and
Hispanics live in suburbs. It did not make clear what counties were
included in that tabulation - there is no standard definition.
Under Frey's rendering, there are 488 suburban counties associated with
the 100 largest metros, and Blacks in the cities outnumber those in the
suburbs by about 2-to-1. The ratio for Hispanics is smaller.
In July, Trump said his administration would rescind a Barack
Obama-era rule that required communities receiving federal housing aid
to assess racial segregation in housing and offer plans to correct it.
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WHERE THE KIDS ARE
The share of families with children at home is slightly higher in
the suburbs than in cities, according to a classification of
counties developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
There is an even bigger gap, however, between households with
children in the suburbs and in small towns or rural areas.
ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION
The U.S. suburbs' GDP share has not been growing, at least before
the coronavirus hit earlier this year. Knowledge industries have
flocked to cities. Manufacturing needs space. Malls and office parks
may have seen their best days.
The post-pandemic age may change much about how the United States
organizes itself, but the advantage in that shift may accrue to
smaller places, not cities or suburbs. Since 2000, the GDP share
among the suburbs has been stagnant.
Poverty rates rose in U.S. suburbs in the 2000s, and climbed 57% in
the country’s largest metro areas between 2000 and 2015, Brookings
calculated .
HOUSEWIVES
The suburbs are no longer a hub of stay-at-home moms, unlike the
popular image of such communities in the 1950s. Today, many married
women work, and fewer adult women are married.
Trump's support has eroded in the suburbs because of his
administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in which
170,000 Americans have died . Recent Reuters polling shows
that white suburban Americans are far more worried about the economy
and healthcare than crime.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Heather Timmons and Peter
Cooney)
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