Poverty is rising swiftly in the suburban portions of all six of Minnesota's congressional districts that include at least some of the suburbs, a new report says.
The report comes out of Washington but responds to questions that are arising in Minnesota as well: What might be the political implications as poverty increasingly spreads into traditionally Republican areas?
A new Brookings Institution study compared the 368 U.S. House districts that take in at least some suburbs of big cities.
For Minnesota, the results indicated that five of the six districts fall within the top 15 percent nationally for steep, quick rises in poverty rates.
Most had low rates of poverty to start with, so the numeric changes didn't rank as high.
The 20,000-person increase in Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen's Third District in the Minneapolis suburbs, for instance, placed only 61st. The 16,000 in Republican Rep. John Kline's Second District ranked 99th.
Still, the rise in poverty is just part of a cluster of demographic changes that may make suburban congressional seats more competitive.
The rise in poverty results from a number of factors, including efforts to spread out subsidized housing and the economic bust. The downturn hit hard among modest-income residents drawn to suburbs by factory and service jobs in outer-ring suburbs such as Burnsville and Shakopee, which saw big spikes in racial and ethnic diversity.
