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The suburban poor population has been growing at an alarming rate, according to Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program . While suburban poverty has increased over 60% since 2000, we still have trouble picturing poverty outside of urban or deep rural areas. Kneebone and Berube have authored a book, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America . They also have a lot of helpful supplements, community profiles, and stories online, here . This video highlights the central challenge of tackling the rising poverty rate in the suburbs.

If Karen Dynan were in charge of fixing the federal budget, she would put in place measures to encourage more savings for Americans at all income levels. Dynan, Co-director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution , has written a policy proposal on savings for The Hamilton Project . In it, she point to the figure below as revealing a major problem: Dynan writes: Increasing personal saving in the United States is a desirable policy goal. To be sure, over the near future there would be a downside to households saving more because that means they would be spending less, and, in turn, the economic recovery would not be as strong as it otherwise would be. But, over the longer run, higher personal saving would lead to stronger economic growth. The correlation between a country’s saving rate and its investment rate remains large and significant despite the globalization of international capital markets (Obstfeld and Rogoff, 2000). Hence, higher personal saving in the United States should increase investment in this country, which, in turn, should raise our capital stock and our productive capacity. In addition to promoting higher personal saving in the aggregate, policy also should encourage higher saving among individual households. Households need savings in order to cope with unforeseen disruptions to their income and unanticipated consumption needs. Having such reserves is even more important now than it was in the past because household income volatility has trended upward amid ever-more-competitive and dynamic labor markets: recent research has found that the share of households experiencing a 50 percent plunge in income over a two-year period climbed from about 7 percent in 1971 to 10 percent in 2008 (Dynan, Elmendorf, and Sichel 2012). Moreover, as policymakers look for ways to reduce growing budget deficits, they may cut social programs so that the need for households to have precautionary reserves may be even higher in the future. Saving also provides households with opportunities. Funds accumulated through saving can be used to pay for college tuition and to purchase big-ticket items such as cars and homes. Saving is likely even more important to attaining homeownership than it was in the past, given the greatly reduced availability of low-down-payment mortgages in the wake of the recent mortgage crisis. In addition, saving puts some households in a better position to establish businesses. Read the policy proposal here . And watch Dynan summarize the report below:

Brookings has compiled a series of articles and talks from its Economic Studies experts that address what the top economic issues of the year. You can access them all at this page . Among the top stories: the resilience of the American consumer. Karen Dynan , co-director of the Brookings Economic Studies Program, says American consumers were the key to the positive trending of the economy.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution 's Initiative on Business and Public Policy conference earlier this week, Jonathan Browning , CEO of Volkswagen Group of America , sounded a warning to U.S. business leaders. U.S. companies need to recognize that they are competing with "aggressive and expanding markets," argues Browning. And he cautions business leaders to not make any assumptions about the attractiveness of doing business in America in today's shifting global markets.

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner visited the Brookings Institution this week to talk about the state of the economy. He addressed a variety of issues during the talk, from China, to the importance of education and health care in the US. He offered a cautiously optimistic take on the short term prospects for the US economy. But he was more bullish on the underlying strengths of the recovery. In this excerpt, he speaks to why he believes the US is poised for strong growth down the road: Watch the more of the talk here .

Speaking yesterday at the Brookings Institution , Small Business Administrator Karen Mills once again argued that the big challenge for small businesses is getting access to capital. Mills pointed to positive signs for small business growth, but without banks lending to smaller institutions in many communities, there is a gap between supply and demand. One answer may be fostering more private/public partnerships: Watch more excerpts from Mills's appearance yesterday here .

The Brookings Institution 's latest MetroMonitor shows continuing growth in most metropolitan US markets, but the rate of growth is slowing as the labor market struggles continue. Here's a look at the employment picture across metro areas: From the report: Seventy-three of the 100 largest metropolitan areas had job growth in the first quarter of 2011, up from 67 in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 35 in the third quarter of 2010. However, the number of large metropolitan areas with job growth fell short of its recent high of 94, achieved in the second quarter of 2010. Moreover, the rate of job growth in the first quarter, 0.3 percent for the 100 largest metropolitan areas combined, was very low, equivalent to only a 1.2 percent job annual job growth rate, which is too low to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Twenty large metropolitan areas gained jobs in all of the last four quarters. Austin, Charleston, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Grand Rapids, Greenville, Hartford, Houston, Milwaukee, New Haven, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Provo, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Toledo, Washington, and Youngstown gained jobs in every quarter from the second quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011. Thirty-two more metropolitan areas gained jobs in both the last quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. Seventy-seven of the 100 largest metropolitan areas lost a greater share of jobs 13 quarters after the start of the Great Recession (the fourth quarter of 2007) than they did during the first 13 quarters after the start of any of the previous three national recessions. Thirteen quarters after the start of the national recession, the 100 largest metropolitan areas combined had lost 5.3 percent of the jobs they had at the start of the Great Recession that began in 2007, compared to 1.1 percent for the 2001 recession. However, in the 1981–1982 recession, employment in the 100 largest metropolitan areas had grown by 6.3 percent in the first 13 quarters after the start of the national recession and in the 1990–1991 recession it had grown by 0.5 percent. Report author Howard Wial discusses some of the key findings in this short video: Brookings has several interactive maps in support of the MetroMonitor report. You can access them here . And read the full report here .