I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Marcus Martin of the J. McDonald Williams Institute, the research arm of the Foundation for Community Empowerment at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas forum on "Concentrated Poverty" today. The other speaker was Dr. Paul Jagowsky, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Paul Jagowsky advocates government intervention to make sure there a mixed income neighborhood instead of single income neighborhood. In other words, let's mix Highland Park and south Oak Cliff to make sure everyone has problem instead of letting the problem concentrated in one neighborhood. Let's spread murders and other kinds of crimes around so every neighborhood has an equal number of break ins and robberies. Great typical solution from a Harvard educated liberal northeasterner for mitigating the symptoms instead of treating the root cause of the problem.

Dr. Martin advocates individual responsibility with help from the community and free market solution. Education is the key to solve the problem. Your chance of being a murder victim is greatly reduced if you have a college degree, check the statistics here. The highest concentration of residents with a bachelor degree, North Dallas with 55%, has the lowest concentration of poverty. The lowest concentration of residents with a bachelor degree, South Oak Cliff with 6%, has the highest concentration of poverty. If you are moving to Dallas, avoid zipcode 75210, the Frazier neighborhood, and 75215, two that have the highest concentration of single mother and teen pregnancy. Highest crime rate in Dallas concentrated in three zipcodes: 75215, 75216, and 75217. In addition to those three, 75220 and 75243, make up the five of the six zipcodes in the state of Texas with the highest number of parolees.