A disturbing report from the U.S Census Bureau shows San Antonio's poverty rate rose more than any other major city in the the country in 2016, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
While the fact majority of America's thirty largest cities say poverty rates decline in 2016 as the nation's economy picked up steam, San Antonio's poverty rate jumped from 14.6% to 15%, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Poverty is defined as a family of four making $24,339 a year or less. The Census Bureau, in its report, did not take into consideration factors like cost of living or levels of welfare and assistance benefits available to the poor.
Kristie Tingle of the liberal Texas Center for Public Policy Priorities says this is particularly concerning given San Antonio's overall childhood poverty rate.
"There are really concerning child poverty numbers right now," she told News Radio 1200 WOAI. "I don't think a lot of people in Texas really know how many children are living in poverty."
San Antonio is not the big city with the country's highest poverty rate. It was third highest in 2016 with Miami and Riverside California reporting higher rates. But both those cities experienced a significant decrease in their poverty rate last year, while San Antonio stood almost alone with an increase.
Houston also had an increase in its poverty rate, to 14.8%, but Houston's increase was not as sharp as San Antonio's, according to the Census Bureau.
The 2016 figure follows a Census Bureau report that in 2015, San Antonio's poverty rate had actually fallen sharply, by more than 2 percentage points.
"What we want to see is large decreases everywhere," Tingle said. "It would be great if we had economic growth that could support families a little bit more."
Several factors are given for San Antonio's slide into deeper poverty. They include immigration, with most immigrants not as skilled or educated as the native born population. That is why the Brownsville, McAllen, and Laredo metros all have the highest poverty rates in the country, about 30%.
There is also a concern about continued low education levels in San Antonio, and despite an increase in well paying tech and manufacturing jobs, many of San Antonio's jobs remain low paying service industry positions.
There is also the fact that in 2013 and 2014, the San Antonio metro added many well paying oilfield jobs due to the surge in the Eagle Ford Shale, and nearly 100,000 of those jobs have gone away since the oil price drop of late 2014.
The lowest poverty rates in the country are in the cities with the highest education attainment, including Washington DC, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.