Compared to the rest of the world, the United States is economically prosperous, but many citizens are plagued by poverty and destitution. Poverty has become such a problem that one in six Americans lives below the poverty line (Yen). Despite the significant number of Americans living in poverty, most are unaware of the scale and scope of poverty. Public apathy toward poverty has made it an invisible epidemic. The flight of the middle class from the cities has created de facto segregation between the poor and the financially better off. Lawmakers say running on the theme of “fighting poverty” is unappealing to the majority of their middle-class voters. The media turns a blind eye to the poverty epidemic in the United States because poverty doesn't excite viewers or get favorable ratings. Cities are now bastions of poverty, and the concentration of the poor in cities began to skyrocket in the years after World War II. The sharp increase in the number of poor families living in cities is directly linked to the movement of the middle class out of cities and into the suburbs. The disparity is so profound that “the population of midtown Manhattan went from 1.5 million during the day to 2,000 at night” (Invisible Poor). Socioeconomic segregation created a permanent underclass that rarely interacted with its affluent counterparts. Class separation based on socioeconomic status plays into the natural human desire to show indifference to the plight of others. This indifference has fueled the isolation of poverty because suburbanites are unlikely to interact with the poor. The per capita poverty rate is therefore significantly higher in urban areas; suburban dwellers are statistics... middle of paper ...... factors alone have made poverty irrelevant, however, these factors combined have made poverty a completely invisible problem. Works Cited Ferguson, Lena. “INSIDE AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST POVERTY.” CICI RSS. Competitive Downtown Initiative, February 3, 2014. Web. April 15, 2014. “The invisible poor”. AHSD. Abington Heights School District, nd Web. April 15, 2014. Glickman, Dan. American News. USNews & World Report, May 1, 2013. Web. April 15, 2014. Yen, Hope. "The True Measure of Poverty: 1 in 6 Americans - NBC News." NBC News. Associated Press, November 6, 2013. Web. April 15, 2014. Raab, Barbara. “Media coverage of poverty: why “so little”? -NBC News. »NBC News. National Broadcasting Corporation, April 2, 2014. Web. April 15, 2014. “About poverty. » United States Census Bureau. United States Federal Statistical System, September 17, 2013. Web. April 13. 2014.