The Landscape of Recession: Unemployment and Safety Net Services Across Urban and Suburban America

As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program through the Brookings Institution, this paper analyzes poverty across cities and suburbs as a result of the recession. Since December 2007, 6.6 million people have become unemployed, and the need for assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly, food stamps) has reached a high. The author provides an analysis of unemployment and food stamps as indicators of poverty to understand how poverty across these areas has unevenly increased.