Andrew Parker remembers how eye-opening his first tutoring experience as a freshman in West Philadelphia was.
"I didn't grow up in an urban area," said Parker, who is from Maine. "They taught me a lot about Philadelphia just by telling me what water ice was, where the Italian market was."
But beyond learning about the city, Parker had his first glimpse of urban poverty.
For "a lot of these kids, their lives are very unstable just because they don't know what they're going home to, if there's going to be food on the table or a roof over their heads," he said.
In 2004, about 25 percent of Philadelphia's 1.41 million residents lived below the poverty line, up from 22 percent a year earlier, according to figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau.
This increase pushed Philadelphia into its worst ranking in three years, becoming the fifth-poorest U.S. county and the ninth-poorest U.S. city.
The results came from the 2004 American Community Survey, a yearly study that collects a wide range of demographic data, from race to income to housing costs.
The city's poverty levels most likely are lingering effects of the nationwide recession experienced at the beginning of the decade, said Mark Stern, co-director of Penn's Urban Studies program. Additionally, the latest economic upturn has disproportionately benefited high-income people, he said.
Stern, who is a professor in the School of Social Policy and Practice, also attributed Philadelphia's persistent poverty levels to the high percentage of the population that is black.
"All the things that have kept African-American poverty rates high have kept Philadelphia poverty rates high," he said. "You really cannot talk about poverty without talking about race in America."
While the character of economic inequality has become more complicated over the last 30 years, blacks still face hurdles in terms of finding jobs, getting an education and earning a decent income, Stern said.
He noted, however, that the rankings should not receive too much emphasis. Because the survey has a sampling error, the actual figure could be as much as 2.3 percent different.
"If you put the pluses and minuses around each of the rankings, it's not clear if we moved up or if other places moved down in reality," he said. "The real story is that [the poverty level] is not going down."
For Philadelphia youth, the situation is worse.
From 2003 to 2004, the percentage of Philadelphia children living in poverty rose from 28 percent to 35 percent. The city moved from No. 24 to No. 9 among American cities with the highest percentage of youth in poverty.
"Unfortunately, I don't think it's surprising," Parker said.
Now a senior and chairman of the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, Parker said he often witnesses the effects of poverty on his students firsthand.
"Some of these kids come and tell us they can't stay after school to get help because they have to stay at home to watch their younger siblings because their parents are working a second job," he said. "Fourth-graders, fifth-graders shouldn't have to go home to baby-sit all afternoon."
In Philadelphia, as with most major American cities, there is a higher proportion of children living with single parents than in the country as a whole, Stern said. Single-earner households are more prone to the effects of an economic recession, he added.
"Kids are going to be a population that records increases in economic vulnerability [more] than the population as a whole," he said.
Ira Harkavy, director of the Center for Community Partnerships, said that the new figures are a call to action.
"In my judgment, it is a call on universities, particularly urban universities ... to work on these universal issues that have manifested right in their own backyard," Harkavy said, adding that the human resources available at universities are vital to solving community problems.
For students like Parker, the call is heard loud and clear.
"You don't always need specialized training or previous experience to get involved in a community," Parker said. "You just need the ability to commit a few hours a week to just helping out."
Student efforts are certainly an important part of making a difference, but students alone are not sufficient to ensure the reduction of poverty, Harkavy said.
"Indeed, Penn does a great deal," he said. "But Penn, as well as other great universities, can do more, in my judgment. We can do more."
