Urban Poverty And The Underclass

Author : Enzo Mingione
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0470712651
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Urban Poverty and the Underclass written by Enzo Mingione and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades "poverty" has moved centrestage as an issue within the social sciences. This volume, edited by one of Europe's foremost sociologists, aims to assess the debates surrounding poverty and the responses to it, exploring the ways in which the various socio-political systems and welfarist regimes are being radically transformed. The essays examine how such change is effected by failing welfare programmes and enervating social structures such as family and community which once would have provided mechanisms of social stability. The first part of the book provides reflections on urban poverty; the second part discusses the widely debated idea of an "underclass" and its meanings in Europe and in the USA, and the final part draws on concrete empirical analyses to examine the patterns of poverty thoughout Western Europe. This volume will be of first-rate importance to all serious students of politics, sociology, geography, public policy, youth and community studies, social policy and American studies.

Author : Joel A. Devine
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780202369716
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Greatest of Evils written by Joel A. Devine and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate on persisting poverty in the United States, somewhat dampened for the past decade, has now been fully rekindled. Devine and Wright have entered that debate with an analysis that is both quantitative and qualitative, informed on the one side by urban ethnography and steeped in official statistics and relevant data on the other. The result is an incisive and cogently documented narrative account leading to policy recommendations for a new president and a new era. In The Greatest of Evils, Devine and Wright develop three principal themes. First they argue that poverty is by no means monolithic: each subgroup within the population in poverty tends to have different problems. Secondly, the so-called "underclass" within the poverty population represents a new and especially corrosive development, one that cannot be analyzed in traditional terms nor dealt with in traditions ways. Thirdly, the War on Poverty of the Sixties was not the unmitigated disaster that so many have come to believe, and offered a boldness of vision that today's poverty policies tend to lack. In exploring these themes, the authors show how the social and economic costs of poverty-related problems exceed what it will cost to find remedies that address the underlying causes of residual poverty.

Author : Michael B. Katz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821703
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Improving Poor People written by Michael B. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There are places where history feels irrelevant, and America's inner cities are among them," acknowledges Michael Katz, in expressing the tensions between activism and scholarship. But this major historian of urban poverty realizes that the pain in these cities has its origins in the American past. To understand contemporary poverty, he looks particularly at an old attitude: because many nineteenth-century reformers traced extreme poverty to drink, laziness, and other forms of bad behavior, they tried to use public policy and philanthropy to improve the character of poor people, rather than to attack the structural causes of their misery. Showing how this misdiagnosis has afflicted today's welfare and educational systems, Katz draws on his own experiences to introduce each of four topics--the welfare state, the "underclass" debate, urban school reform, and the strategies of survival used by the urban poor. Uniquely informed by his personal involvement, each chapter also illustrates the interpretive power of history by focusing on a strand of social policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: social welfare from the poorhouse era through the New Deal, ideas about urban poverty from the undeserving poor to the "underclass," and the emergence of public education through the radical school reform movement now at work in Chicago. Why have American governments proved unable to redesign a welfare system that will satisfy anyone? Why has public policy proved unable to eradicate poverty and prevent the deterioration of major cities? What strategies have helped poor people survive the poverty endemic to urban history? How did urban schools become unresponsive bureaucracies that fail to educate most of their students? Are there fresh, constructive ways to think about welfare, poverty, and public education? Throughout the book Katz shows how interpretations of the past, grounded in analytic history, can free us of comforting myths and help us to reframe discussions of these great public issues.

Author : Michael B. Katz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691188548
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The "Underclass" Debate written by Michael B. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do ominous reports of an emerging "underclass" reveal an unprecedented crisis in American society? Or are social commentators simply rediscovering the tragedy of recurring urban poverty, as they seem to do every few decades? Although social scientists and members of the public make frequent assumptions about these questions, they have little information about the crucial differences between past and present. By providing a badly needed historical context, these essays reframe today's "underclass" debate. Realizing that labels of "social pathology" echo fruitless distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the contributors focus not on individual and family behavior but on a complex set of processes that have been at work over a long period, degrading the inner cities and, inevitably, the nation as a whole. How do individuals among the urban poor manage to survive? How have they created a dissident "infrapolitics?" How have social relations within the urban ghettos changed? What has been the effect of industrial restructuring on poverty? Besides exploring these questions, the contributors discuss the influence of African traditions on the family patterns of African Americans, the origins of institutions that serve the urban poor, the reasons for the crisis in urban education, the achievements and limits of the War on Poverty, and the role of income transfers, earnings, and the contributions of family members in overcoming poverty. The message of the essays is clear: Americans will flourish or fail together.

Author : Joel A. Devine
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783110141450
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Greatest of Evils written by Joel A. Devine and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Joel A. Devine
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783110141467
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Greatest of Evils written by Joel A. Devine and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : William Julius Wilson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226924653
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Truly Disadvantaged written by William Julius Wilson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An assessment of the relationship between race and poverty in the United States, and potential solutions for the issue. Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner-city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in the inner city, Wilson offers essential information and several solutions to policymakers. The Truly Disadvantaged is a wide-ranging examination, looking at the relationship between race, employment, and education from the 1950s onwards, with surprising and provocative findings. This second edition also includes a new afterword from Wilson himself that brings the book up to date and offers fresh insight into its findings. Praise for The Truly Disadvantaged “The Truly Disadvantaged should spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policymakers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson’s incisive analysis.” —Robert Greenstein, New York Times Book Review “The Truly Disadvantaged not only assembles a vast array of data gleamed from the works of specialists, it offers much new information and analysis. Wilson has asked the hard questions, he has done his homework, and he has dared to speak unpopular truths.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass.” —David J. Garrow, Washington Post Book World

Author : Christopher Jencks
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815723462
Total Pages : 508 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Urban Underclass written by Christopher Jencks and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2001-08-09 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many believe that the urban underclass in America is a large, rapidly increasing proportion of the population; that crime, teenage pregnancy, and high school dropout rates are escalating; and that welfare rolls are exploding. Yet none of these perceptions is accurate. Here, noted authorities, including William J. Wilson, attempt to separate the truth about poverty, social dislocation, and changes in American family life from the myths that have become part of contemporary folklore.

Author : Ken Auletta
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504093577
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Underclass written by Ken Auletta and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author and New Yorker columnist delves into the core of American poverty in the early 1980s: “Invaluable.” —The Washington Post First appearing as a three-part series in the New Yorker, Ken Auletta’s The Underclass provides an enlightening look at the lives of addicts, dropouts, ex-convicts, welfare recipients, and individuals experiencing homelessness. Auletta’s investigation began with a seemingly simple goal: to find out who exactly makes up the poorest of the poor, and to trace the many paths that took them there. As the author follows 250 hardened members of this “underclass,” he focuses on efforts to help them reconstruct their lives and find a functional place in mainstream society. Through the lives of the men and women he encounters, Auletta discovers the complex truths that have made hard-core poverty in America such an intractable problem. In a nation where poverty and welfare rolls are declining but the underclass persists, the United States is as conflicted as ever about its responsibilities toward all its people. With his empathy, insight, and expert reportage, Auletta’s The Underclass remains as pertinent as ever.

Author : Lydia Morris
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134943148
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dangerous Classes written by Lydia Morris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an authoritative and much needed critical review of British and American debates about the underclass, set in the context of historical material and policy developments. The idea of an underclass is based on a notion of social exclusion, be it cultural or structural in nature. It strikes a contrast with the idea of social citizenship. In accepted definitions of the underclass state dependence had come to be seen as a badge of exclusion rather than a guarantee of inclusion. There has been a gradual shift of emphasis in recent commentary from concern with social rights to anxiety about social obligations, much of which relates to the enforcement of the work ethic. Implicit in much of the literature is an inconclusive examination of gender roles, and particularly the failure of single mother to fulfil their social duties. The ambiguities and contradictions of this postion are uncovered. So too is the neglected issue of migrant labour and its use as a source of labour on terms not acceptable to the native population. The implications of this phenomenon for questions of social inclusion and the definition of the underclass are then considered in the wider context of the social construction of the labour market. The book has emerged from the author's long standing interest and research in unemployment, labour market change, gender relations and social policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers in all of these fields.