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Cleveland Now Nation's 4th Poorest City

According to this year's American Community Survey -- released yesterday -- Cleveland has slipped down to fourth place among the nation's poorest big cities. But, some critics are dubious about the interpretation of these numbers.

Mark Schweitzer: I'm not at all fond of the ranking part of this.

Mark Schweitzer is an economist with the Federal Reserve.

Mark Schweitzer: If you take a look at the top ten cities -- the poorest cities from last year and the poorest cities from this year -- you would see that nine out of the ten are exactly the same. None of these places' poverty rates are moving by very much.

Schweitzer thinks a more important statistic is the correlation between education and a person's ability to get out of poverty. He suggests that local leaders should focus their efforts on promoting high school completion. David C. Barnett, 90.3.

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