A HARD LOOK AT
POVERTY IN INDIANAPOLIS

In Marion County, 14% of residents and 19% of children live below the federal poverty line (Source: Hoosier Data, 2020). These numbers are higher than the national average, where 11% of United States residents live below the federal poverty line (Sources: U.S. Census Bureau 2021).

According to SAVI research through The Polis Center at IUPUI (2019), 1 in 4 Indianapolis residents live in low-income neighborhoods or concentrated poverty. A family of four living in poverty is surviving on an income below $27,750. Yet according to the Indiana Institute for Working Families, a four-person family with two school children in Marion County needs $56,264 to be self-sufficient. Families in poverty have an annual income less than half the amount needed to be self-sufficient.

What would it take to drop the poverty rate down by at least 10%? How do we move 6,400 households permanently out of poverty? Who does what? How are economic development and poverty reduction outcomes and strategies connected to the most important goals of the city?

Poverty limits the rate of growth household incomes, business profitability, and tax revenues. It drives crime rates, diminishes graduation rates, increases homelessness, and hampers employers’ abilities to hire qualified candidates.

Poverty drives crime rates, diminishes graduation rates, and increases homelessness. Furthermore, subsidy programs have a built-in disincentive known as the Cliff Effect that generates a phantom workforce —people who want to work, can work, but will not or cannot because they will lose more childcare, Medicaid, food stamps etc. than they can replace with a new job, increased hours, and/or taking a raise.

The Circles approach to changing poverty, and these seemingly ingrained social challenges, is to work together over time to create stronger, more secure families and individuals in our community.