In their book Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, Brookings researchers Kneebone and Berube (2013) connected the rise of the suburban poor to urban sprawl.  After all, people with sufficient income are able to escape the problems associated with core cities and inner-ring suburbs by moving to newer communities located on the fringes of the urbanized area.  In an effort to counteract the effect of urban sprawl, the City of Philadelphia started issuing 10-year tax abatements on residential new construction and improvement projects in 2000 (Kromer, 2009).  This policy has led to the redevelopment of several previously distressed neighborhoods and has led to an influx of young professional homeowners.  It has also led to the displacement of many impoverished residents to other parts of the nine-county Philadelphia region. 

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Philadelphia’s tax abatement policy in the suburbanization of poverty in its eight surrounding counties. Using GIS and regression analysis, this paper will present a statistical model on data obtained from the Census, the City of Philadelphia, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources from 1990 to present examining the effect of Philadelphia’s tax abatement policy.  The paper will then conclude with implications for policy formation.