Brian Sharp

@SharpRoc

Among the troubling statistics in a new report released Tuesday was the rising concentration of poverty in city neighborhoods, and expanding number of census tracts where the poverty rate stood at 40 percent or higher.

The count of high-poverty census tracts has nearly doubled in the city, from 19 to 37 since 2000. Fully one-third of Rochester residents live in poverty, and nearly another third require some outside assistance to get by, according to estimates in the ACT Rochester and Rochester Area Community Foundation update to its 2013 report on the state of poverty and self-sufficiency across the Greater Rochester region.

The numbers are a near mirror-image of the suburbs, where more than two-thirds of residents are self-sufficient. And while the poverty rate in the the nine-county Greater Rochester region continues to creep upward, it remains below state and national averages, the report shows.

"We don't really have a poverty problem," said Edward Doherty, a Strategic Community Intervention associate who served as project manager and editor of the report, and is active in local efforts to combat poverty. "We have a concentration of poverty problem."

Rochester has the third-highest concentration of poverty in the nation. And a significant segment of that population is female-headed families with children younger than 18. Though accounting for 17 percent of the population, the report found, the city has 36 percent of such households, and that population has a staggering poverty rate of 59.9 percent. Doing the math, the report estimates these families account for nearly half of all people living in poverty in the city, and these children account for more than 80 percent of all poor children in the city.

"The fundamental question is: Do we have more female-headed households with children than other areas, or have we concentrated that population more centrally?" Doherty asks, asserting that a lack of housing opportunities for families in the suburbs is driving the poverty concentration in the city.

The regional poverty rate stood at 13.2 percent three years ago, and is 14.3 percent today. The state and national poverty rates are a similar 15.6 percent.

Each of the nine counties in the region saw poverty increase except Yates, which was unchanged. Orleans saw the largest increase, at 3.4 percentage points. Monroe, Livingston, and Seneca all increased by at least 1 percentage point, while the others — Genesee, Wayne, Ontario and Wyoming — increased by less.

The city's poverty rate rose from 31.1 percent to 33.8 percent, the report states.

►READ MORE: Poverty in Rochester: How severe is it?

Blacks and Latinos are three times more likely than whites to be poor, the report states.

One the broader spectrum of financial self-sufficiency, the report stated that a family of four in Monroe County needed a household income of $63,949 to meet basic needs without receiving a subsidy, where the federal poverty level was $24,300. The report estimated that more than 167,600 people across the region are living below the federal poverty level — two-thirds of whom reside in Monroe County.

Among comparably sized cities, Rochester ranks first in childhood poverty (52.5 percent), extreme poverty (16.4 percent at less than half the federal poverty level), poverty rate for female-headed households (49 percent) and female-headed families with children (59.9 percent). All those were unchanged from three years ago. On a positive note, Rochester saw its rankings improve and poverty rates decline for those with a bachelor's degree and for seniors.

The city ranks second overall, behind Hartford, Connecticut, when it comes to overall poverty rate.

BDSHARP@Gannett.com