The Urban Underclass - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815746059 ISBN 13: 9780815746058

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1991

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the author of The Homeless (Harvard, 1994) and Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Harperperennial, 1993), and the coeditor of The Urban Underclass (Brookings, 1991). Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard, the director of PEPG, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of numerous books, including The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools, with William G. Howell (Brookings, 2004 and 2006). He is coeditor (with Martin West) of No Child Left Behind? The Practice and Politics of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003).

From the Back Cover

The essays in this book try to separate the truth about poverty, social dislocation, and changes in America family life from the myths that have become part of contemporary folklore. These essays also show the reasons for poverty among children, demonstrate that the main issue is not so much a growth in the size of the underclass as the persistence of poverty decades after the country thought it had addressed the problem, and they point out the paradox of poverty in a wealthy nation will continue until society makes greater efforts to provide all citizens with improved educational and economic opportunities as well as adequate income maintenance in times of need.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815746059
• ISBN 13: 9780815746058
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 507
• Editor: Jencks Christopher