Answer 6: The Middle Class

While it has been heartening to see Baby Boomers migrate from the suburbs into Center City, and young homemakers settle into Fishtown and South Philly, outside this zone of prosperity, the story is different.

Philadelphia continues to lose middle-class residents, which is another way of saying it continues to lose the people who contribute taxes and wealth to the city, buy homes and create stable neighborhoods.

We used to call this phenomenon white flight.  No more.  It is now multi-ethnic, multi-racial middle class flight. We covered this topic in a recent Metropolis Cover Story called Black Exodus.

Here is an excerpt:

"Much is made of the poverty rate among blacks, but there has always been a sizeable black middle class in the city. For this series of stories, we define middle class as any household with income of $60,000 or more a year.

In 1989 and 1999, 26 percent of black of the black households in Philadelphia fell into the $60,000+ range when their incomes were adjusted for inflation. Between 2005 and 2009, the percentage shrunk to 20 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. This is a significant drop."

Where are these affluent African Americans going?  One popular destination is the Philadelphia suburbs. The number of black residents in the townships and boroughs that touch Philadelphia has increased by 50 percent in the last decade.

Not all of these inner ring suburbs are affluent. Upper Darby, for instance, remains working class.  But, as accompanying graphic shows, other more affluent suburbs have gotten their share.

The departure of so many middle class households erodes the city's collective wealth with the same force as the increase in poor people.