Prevalent low income status in Canadian and United States metropolitan areas, 1980 and 1990

As compared to Toronto's poor people, three to four-fold as many of upstate New York's poor live in severely impoverished neighborhoods, areas where 4 0% or more of the residents have annual incomes below the federally establi shed low income or poverty criterion. However, the prevalence of such extre mely degraded living conditions increased similarly (two-fold) on both side s of the Canadian-US border during the 1980s. This urban problem, of the co ncentration of poor people, seems to predominantly be an inner-city problem in the US, whereas it was found to be nearly equivalently extant in the in ner-city, mid-suburban and outlying suburban areas of metropolitan Toronto.