This report marks the inaugural edition of a regular summary report in Brookings' "State of Metropolitan America" series. It focuses on the major demographic forces transforming the nation and large metropolitan areas in the 2000s. In this sense, it previews what people will learn from the results of the 2010 census, as well as supplements those…

This report examines patterns of poverty using seven different measures: average monthly poverty, episodic poverty, chronic poverty, annual poverty, poverty spells, poverty entry rates, and poverty exit rates. Data come from the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and reflect the dynamics of poverty from 1996-1999.…