After the Census Bureau reported that the city’s poverty rate hit an all-time low last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio rushed to take credit. Hah!
Yes, the rate dropped from 20.9 percent in 2013, the year before the mayor took office, to 17.3 percent in 2018.
But de Blasio’s top goal is (supposedly) to reduce inequality, and the city remains one of the most unequal places in the country.
Since 2013, the city has added more than 500,000 jobs, while millions of people have moved in and out — The Big Apple’s population fell by 230,000 last year.
Here’s the thing: The Census also believes the city has started to lose population, after years of growth. The Manhattan Institute’s Alex Armlovich suggests that that exodus is mainly among lower-income New Yorkers — moving away because they’ve been priced out of the city’s housing market.
Certainly, de Blasio’s wrong when he claims to have “lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty in the last five years”: The city’s own data show a total of about 140,000 fewer poor people over that period — and the poverty rate has been dropping all across the nation the whole time.
Even if you buy minimum-wage hikes as a poverty-fighter, you have to thank Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature, not de Blasio.
In fact, economic growth, not government redistribution of wealth, is the key: The strong US economy is driving the national poverty drop, and the story’s the same here. De Blasio hasn’t even pretended to be a pro-growth guy — he’s all about “asking” taxpayers and employers to cough up more.
The truth is that President Trump’s done more for New York’s poor than all the politicians that New Yorkers actually elect.



