If you live in such a neighbourhood, the only time you might hear anything about a poor part of the city is on television or in the papers, which unsurprisingly tend to highlight the gruesome bits.
The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.
Certainly, when people are laid off during a boom, the loss of income is much smaller, presumably because it is easier for them to find a comparable job before their skills start to be lost.
If the financial crisis and deep recession slashed Britain's productive potential, then presumably it would have done the same in America, which suffered a similarly big fallout.