Research Paper

For my research paper I am going to explore the relationship between urban development and poverty rates in associated areas.  I plan on looking at major cities in the United States to see how their populations have changed in the past half century and how their poverty rates have changed.  My question is: does urban development have an effect on poverty in those developing areas?

Thesis: Population growth in urban areas has a negative effect on poverty rates.  As urban areas become more developed a greater number of people in those areas become poor due to job competition and over crowding.  

This is an important topic to look at because in some areas poverty is a huge problem.  If a relationship were found between urban development and poverty then there may be a possibility to implement policies to aid the problem.  Poverty is something that drastically affects many people in this country and if policy makers could find some of the sources that cause poverty they could perhaps do more to combat it.  Researching this specific relationship is one of the ways that policy makers can begin to see what sort of things causes poverty to increase and possibly generate new policies to help prevent poverty.  

I chose this topic because I know that there are many things that cause poverty.  However, I wanted to explore one specific thing that might cause poverty to increase.  I did some research in one of my other classes about poverty in relation to health.  I found that, typically, there are actually more poor people in rural areas than in urban ones, which I found interesting. I also found that the poor in rural areas are worse off than the poor in urban settings. So, this made me want to see if I could find a relationship between growth in urban areas and an increase in the respective poverty rates.

As I mentioned, there are many things that affect poverty.  I believe that urban development is one of them but I realize there are so many other things that come into play as well that I may have a hard time controlling for.  For example, people who are born into poverty and people who move into cities and are already poor which increases both development and poverty rates. Also there may be general aspects of urban life that force people into poverty other than job competition or overcrowding.  I am using a website that allows you to select any city in America and see statistics including population size and poverty over the years.  I am hoping that this and other resources will provide me with enough information to fully and accurately see a connection between urban development and poverty rates.