This Buffalo Brief provides an overview of the geography and statistics around poverty in Niagara County.
Unemployment in Buffalo and the surrounding region shot upward in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but declined in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. In 2017, unemployment rose in the city and region while falling in the state and nation.
Like many cities in the Great Lakes region, Buffalo-Niagara suffers from severe racial inequality and segregation.
Buffalo has a low proportion of foreign born residents compared to other cities. But an unusually high percentage of the region’s foreign-born are refugees. Buffalo has become a top location for refugee resettlement in the nation.
Like many places in the nation’s manufacturing belt, the Buffalo-Niagara metropolitan area has been losing population over the past several decades. This decline reflects the long-term shift of population from the Northeast and Midwest to warmer places in the South and West, as well as the considerable loss of manufacturing jobs in the region. Population loss has been especially severe in the Buffalo area, however, mostly due to its obvious weather disadvantages and an economy …