Suburban poverty is a shrouded development that has blindsided the nation within the past couple decades.

In the past, suburbs were understood to be regions where middle-class Americans could settle down and get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. However, in a recent Brookings Institution analysis of the 2015 U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, the population of people in poverty living in suburban communities surpassed 16 million — outnumbering the poor population in cities by more than 3 million.

Despite this development, poverty continues to be generalized as an “inner-city problem.” In a Quartz article titled “American Poverty Is Moving to the Suburbs,” Dan Kopf explains how the geography of poverty in the United States is continually misrepresented.

For example, in his inauguration speech in 2016, President Donald Trump painted a picture of “(m)others and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.” While he was not wrong in stating that poverty is still an issue in our inner cities, he failed to bring the slightest attention to the larger population of people that struggle with poverty.

This dangerous misrepresentation of the geography of poverty will lead to policies that end up doing more harm than good.

People who struggle with poverty in the suburbs face very diverse challenges, much different than people who struggle with poverty in the inner cities.

While some might argue that suburban surroundings provide a comparatively better chance for people to work their way out of poverty, due to lower crime rates and better schools, suburbs often fail to offer many of the same resources that inner cities do to help people in poverty. Some of these resources include access to public transportation, philanthropic aid and a strong safety net.

In a testimony given before the House Ways and Means Committee, Elizabeth Kneebone, research director at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, discusses these challenges that are particular to suburban poverty.

She reasons that the lack of public transportation means that, “by and large, suburban residents are dependent on owning and maintaining a car—and must bear the associated costs—to reach employment opportunities that are often growing in other parts of the region”.

In addition, due to the common misconception that poverty is mainly an issue in the inner cities, “philanthropic resources continue to disproportionately flow to urban centers,” leaving suburban communities with less assistance, which further compounds the problem.

The nonprofit safety net in suburban communities also, “tends to be stretched thin, with relatively fewer providers serving larger catchment areas than in cities.” These suburban challenges clearly differ from the difficulties found in the inner cities and serve to illustrate how suburbs are less prepared to provide assistance for those in poverty.

In recent news, Trump signed an executive order, promoting work requirements for safety-net programs. It’s clear that Trump is pushing to decrease welfare dependency by attempting to promote employment with incentives; however, this would actually cause even more suffering to people who are already struggling.

In a 2010 Brookings Institution analysis on unemployment, suburbs contained 6.4 million people that were unemployed – more than double the number in cities. The executive order would, in fact, be harder on suburban communities, due to their higher populations of unemployed people.

On the flip side, there are many people who have jobs but just aren’t making enough to get by.

A study by GOBankingRates released earlier this year analyzed the cost of living in 35 major cities and their suburbs to determine where it was cheapest to live. The results revealed that living in the city was cheaper in 25 out of the 35 areas studied —clearly demonstrating that the cost of living is generally higher in suburban communities.

Another Brookings Institution analysis from 2014, on the geography of low-wage work, revealed that 67 percent of workers in low-wage occupations lived in suburban communities. With a higher cost of living and large amounts of low-wage employment, being a working-class member of the suburban community often does little to change a person’s dependency on welfare.

Clearly, Trump’s idea that being employed is all it takes to reduce welfare dependency is fundamentally flawed.

In the future, it is imperative that more research in taken into consideration — and that much more time is spent crafting policy that will meet the needs of more people. It’s time to update Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “war on poverty” to keep up with the changes in the geography and challenges of poverty; making our suburbs better prepared to accommodate low-income populations is a vital part of this initiative.

Society today finds it easier to keep generalizing poverty as an issue of the inner cities, when it is a critical issue in other places as well. Educating the public on the new challenges people face with poverty will help kickstart the conversation around solutions and help the American people to move forward as a less divided nation.