Kansas Citians find themselves tested by the recession in dozens of ways, but none more severely than those pushed into poverty. Here is another test: (1) True or false? Measured strictly by the poverty rate, the Kansas City metro area has fared better in the recession than most.

(2) If the U.S. poverty rate last year reached 14.3 percent and the top 100 metro areas averaged 13.3 percent, what is the number for Kansas City?

(3) If a train leaving St. Louis at 9 a.m. arrived at Wichita at 9 p.m., how much would the poverty rate have changed?

(4) What is interesting about Omaha? Try to explain.

(5) More Americans slipped below the poverty line in our: (a) core cities, (b) their suburbs.

Answers:

1. True: The increase among this metro area’s impoverished — 1.1 percentage points — was slightly less than the national rise of 1.3 points since 2007. The differences seem small, but each tenth of a point represents thousands of struggling families.

2. It is 11.4 percent here.

3. Not a bit. The rate is 12.6 percent in both cities.

4. Omaha is the only one of the nation’s largest 100 metropolitan areas to show no change in the poverty rate in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

5. (b) Over the last two years, suburban cities found they held an additional 1.8 million newly poor, compared with 1.4 million for the urban centers.

The last answer was the perhaps the primary finding of the Brookings Institution in two new studies. Based on the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey, it looked at the 100 metro areas and found that the suburbs now are home to one-third of all the nation’s poor.

All the numbers are based on the official poverty line, set for 2009 at $22,050 for a family of four or $10,830 for a single person. The threshold numbers are for income before tax deductions and don’t count food stamps and tax credits or take into account highly inflationary trends in medicine.

Many people not counted clearly could be considered poor. Median household income is roughly 400 percent of the poverty level, said Frank Lenk, research services director at the Mid-America Regional Council.

In the past 10 years, 5.5 million people joined the ranks of the poor — more than two-thirds in the suburbs. Although the core cities have higher poverty rates — about 19.5 percent compared with 10.4 percent in the suburbs — the gap has steadily slimmed.

“Millions of Americans at all income levels moved to the suburbs looking for better schools, better jobs, affordable housing, and a sense of security, but in recent years, as incomes have fallen, people had a harder and harder time making ends meet,” said Scott Allard, a University of Chicago professor and co-author of one of the reports.

“As a result, Americans who never imagined becoming poor are now asking for assistance, and many are not getting the help they need.”

The Brookings data did not offer a median, but only 26 of the other 99 cities have a lower poverty rate than Kansas City.

This area actually experienced a slight improvement between 2007 and 2008, the rate dropping to 10.1 percent from 10.3 percent. As a result, the one-year percentage point jump was 1.3.

In the Midwest region, the lower-poverty cities were Minneapolis, 9.9 percent; Des Moines, 10.1; and Omaha, 10.7.

To our south, it is a different story: Oklahoma City’s poverty rate was 15.2 percent; Little Rock, 14.7; Tulsa (the only Midwestern city to see a drop of 0.7 percent) 13.5.

If one area could be said to be riding out the recession, according to the poverty indicator, it would be New England, which had lower rates in general and saw even some decreases. Boston; Hartford, Conn.; and Albany, N.Y., are under 10 percent.

It is no surprise that many of the worst-hit are Sun Belt cities that suffered collapses of their housing markets.

In Tucson, for example, nearly 1 in 5 people (19.3 percent) are listed below the poverty line now.

“Like many Midwestern cities, we did not have the big run-up in housing prices,” Lenk said. “We have been able to retain manufacturing jobs much better than many metro areas.”

With many predicting a slow “jobless recovery” and the rate of unemployment stuck a little under 10 percent, some analysts predict the U.S. poverty rate will go up for at least two more years.

As bad as it is on average in most population centers, most fare better than many of America’s more rural areas.

An earlier study based on Census Bureau findings showed the overall nonmetropolitan poverty rate at 16.6 percent in 2009, up from 15.1 percent in one year. That added up to 8.1 million rural poor, according to the Department of Agriculture.