Age discrimination and its corollary, mandatory retirement, are modern legal issues, barely a generation old. In this concise and readable report, Lawrence Friedman explores the apparently sudden emergence of a field of law that pertains mainly to the elderly and middle-aged.

Friedman traces the brief but fascinating social, legislative, and judicial history of age discrimination law and of the laws addressing mandatory retirement. Both histories contain paradoxes and contradictions; both seem simultaneously to make an issue of "age" and to demand a kind of age neutrality, reflecting broad recent changes in American culture. Both histories are intricately bound up with other legal issues—age discrimination with race and sex discrimination; mandatory retirement with the development of pension plans and other social insurance systems. Friedman speculates on the impact of these new laws, illuminating through his analysis the complex phenomenon of "legalization," or the penetration of legal norms into ever more areas of life.

Finally, Friedman offers a provocative conclusion in which he suggests that laws on age discrimination and retirement—laws that appear to have a less extensive social background than one would expect—may in fact be "stand-in" laws for vague but powerful social norms not yet recognized in the legal system.

Your Time Will Come is the first new volume in a special paperback series entitled Social Research Perspectives: Occasional Reports on Current Topics. These Perspectives represent a revival of the Social Science Frontiers series published by the Foundation from 1969 to 1977 and will again offer short, timely, and accessible reports on various aspects of social science research.

LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN is Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Science Perspectives Series

The well-being of individuals routinely depends on their success in obtaining goods and avoiding burdens distributed by society. Local Justice offers the first systematic analysis of the principles and procedures used in dispensing "local justice" in situations as varied as the admission of students to college, the choice of patients for organ transplants, the selection of workers for layoffs, and the induction of men into the army. A prominent theorist in the field of rational choice and decision making, Jon Elster develops a rich selection of empirical examples and case studies to demonstrate the diversity of procedures used by institutions that mete out local justice. From this revealing material Elster fashions a conceptual framework for understanding why institutions make these crucial allocations in the ways they do.

Elster's investigation discloses the many complex and varied approaches of such decision-making bodies as selective service and adoption agencies, employers and universities, prison and immigration authorities. What are the conflicting demands placed on these institutions by the needs of applicants, the recommendations of external agencies, and their own organizational imperatives? Often, as Elster shows, methods of allocation may actually aggravate social problems. For instance, the likelihood that handicapped or minority infants will be adopted is further decreased when agencies apply the same stringent screening criteria—exclusion of people over forty, single parents, working wives, and low-income families—that they use for more sought-after babies.

Elster proposes a classification of the main principles and procedures used to match goods with individuals, charts the interactions among these mechanisms of local justice, and evaluates them in terms of fairness and efficiency. From his empirical groundwork, Elster builds an innovative analysis of the historical processes by which, at given times and under given circumstances, preferences become principles and principles become procedures. Local Justice concludes with a comparison of local justice systems with major contemporary theories of social justice—utilitarianism, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia—and discusses the "common-sense conception of justice" held by professional decision makers such as lawyers, economists, and politicians. The difference between what we say about justice and how we actually dispense it is the illuminating principle behind Elster's book.

A perceptive and cosmopolitan study, Local Justice is a seminal work for all those concerned with the formation of ethical policy and social welfare—philosophers, economists, political scientists, health care professionals, policy makers, and educators.

JON ELSTER is Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

The nature of work in the United States is changing dramatically, as new technologies, a global economy, and more demanding investors combine to create a far more competitive marketplace. Corporate efforts to respond to these new challenges have yielded mixed results. Headlines about instant millionaires and innovative e-businesses mingle with coverage of increasing job insecurity and record wage gaps between upper management and hourly workers. A Working Nation tracks the profound implications the changing workplace has had for all workers and shows who the real economic winners and losers have been in the past twenty-five years.

A Working Nation sorts fact from fiction about the new relationship between workers and firms, and addresses several critical issues: Who are the real winners and losers in this new economy? Has the relationship between workers and firms really been transformed? How have employees become more integrated into or disconnected from corporate strategies and performance? Should government step into this new economic reality and how should it intervene?

Among the topics investigated, David T. Ellwood explores and explains the apparent paradox between the steady rise in per capita national income and the stagnant wages of middle- and working-class workers. Douglas Kruse and Joseph Blasi study relative changes in long-term vs. temporary work, and evaluate the introduction of profit-sharing schemes and high performance workplace programs. William A. Niskanen and Rebecca M. Blank, both former members of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, offer their perspectives on what direction government might take to make this a working nation for everyone. Though Niskanen and Blank take alternative approaches, they both conclude that the primary policy emphasis ought to be on the problems of the least skilled more than on inequality per se, and that a focus on childhood education and tax supports for low-income working families should be of primary concern.

A Working Nation paints a compelling and surprisingly consistent picture of today's workplace. While the booming economy has created millions of new jobs, it has also lead to an alarmingly unbalanced system of rewards that puts less-skilled, and many middle-class, workers at risk. This book is essential reading for those seeking the most efficient answers to the challenges and opportunities of the evolving economy.

DAVID T. ELLWOOD is Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also director of the Aspen Domestic Strategy Group.

REBECCA M. BLANK was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. She is Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and professor of economics at the University of Michigan.

JOSEPH BLASI is professor of sociology at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University.

DOUGLAS KRUSE is professor of economics at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University. He is also research associate  of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

WILLIAM A. NISKANEN was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan and is chairman of the Cato Institute.

KAREN LYNN-DYSON is associate director of the Aspen Institute’s Domestic Strategy Group.

The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children.

For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps.

Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.

GREG J. DUNCAN is professor of economics in the School of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

P. LINDSAY CHASE-LANSDALE is professor of developmental psychology in the School of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

CONTRIBUTORS: P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Greg J. Duncan, David M. Casey, Danielle A. Crosby, Sandra K. Danziger, Kristina Daugirdas, Rachel E. Dunifon, Kathryn Edin, Paula England, Nancy Folbre, Thomas L. Gais, Ron Haskins, Ann E. Horvath-Rose, Aletha C. Huston, Cathy M. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, Andrew S. London, Joan Maya Mazelis, Rashmita S. Mistry, Kristin Anderson Moore, H. Elizabeth Peters, Wendell Primus, Marika N. Ripke, Jennifer L. Romich, Ellen K. Scott, Jack Tweedie, Morgan B. Ward Doran, Alan Weil, Thomas S. Weisner, and W. Jean Young.

One in five American children now live in families with incomes below the povertyline, and their prospects are not bright. Low income is statistically linked with a variety of poor outcomes for children, from low birth weight and poor nutrition in infancy to increased chances of academic failure, emotional distress, and unwed childbirth in adolescence. To address these problems it is not enough to know that money makes a difference; we need to understand how. Consequences of Growing Up Poor is an extensive and illuminating examination of the paths through which economic deprivation damages children at all stages of their development.

In Consequences of Growing Up Poor, developmental psychologists, economists, and sociologists revisit a large body of studies to answer specific questions about how low income puts children at risk intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Many of their investigations demonstrate that although income clearly creates disadvantages, it does so selectively and in a wide variety of ways. Low-income preschoolers exhibit poorer cognitive and verbal skills because they are generally exposed to fewer toys, books, and other stimulating experiences in the home. Poor parents also tend to rely on home-based child care, where the quality and amount of attention children receive is inferior to that of professional facilities. In later years, conflict between economically stressed parents increases anxiety and weakens self-esteem in their teenaged children.

Although they share economic hardships, the home lives of poor children are not homogenous. Consequences of Growing Up Poor investigates whether such family conditions as the marital status, education, and involvement of parents mitigate the ill effects of poverty. Consequences of Growing Up Poor also looks at the importance of timing: Does being poor have a different impact on preschoolers, children, and adolescents? When are children most vulnerable to poverty? Some contributors find that poverty in the prenatal or early childhood years appears to be particularly detrimental to cognitive development and physical health. Others offer evidence that lower income has a stronger negative effect during adolescence than in childhood or adulthood.

Based on their findings, the editors and contributors to Consequences of Growing Up Poor recommend more sharply focused child welfare policies targeted to specific eras and conditions of poor children's lives. They also weigh the relative need for income supplements, child care subsidies, and home interventions. Consequences of Growing Up Poor describes the extent and causes of hardships for poor children, defines the interaction between income and family, and offers solutions to improve young lives.

JEANNE BROOKS-GUNN is Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also director of the Center for Young Children and Families, and co-directs the Adolescent Study Program at Teachers College.

GREG J. DUNCAN is professor of education and social policy and a faculty associate in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Terry Adams, William Axinn, Bernard Boulerice, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Karen P. Carver, Katherine Jewsbury Conger, Rand D. Conger, Mary Corcoran, Randal D. Day, Greg J. Duncan, Glen H. Elder, Jr., Thomas L. Hanson, Robert M. Hauser, Robert Haveman, Donald J. Hernandez, Pamela K. Klebanov, Sanders Korenman, Ellen L. Lipman, Nancy Maritato, Susan E. Mayer, Sara S. McLanahan, Jane E. Miller, Natalie C. Mullis, The National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD), David R. Offord, Linda Pagani, Kathleen M. Paasch, H. Elizabeth Peters, Judith R. Smith, Megan M. Sweeney, Jay D. Teachman, Elizabeth Thomson, Arland Thornton, Richard E. Tremblay, Kathryn Wilson, and Barbara Wolfe.

Winner of the 2007 Richard A. Lester Prize for Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations

During the 1990s, growing demands to end chronic welfare dependency culminated in the 1996 federal “welfare-to-work” reforms. But regardless of welfare reform, the United States has always been home to a large population of working poor—people who remain poor even when they work and do not receive welfare. In a concentrated effort to address the problems of the working poor, a coalition of community activists and business leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, launched New Hope, an experimental program that boosted employment among the city’s poor while reducing poverty and improving children’s lives. In Higher Ground, Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston, and Thomas Weisner provide a compelling look at how New Hope can serve as a model for national anti-poverty policies.

New Hope was a social contract—not a welfare program—in which participants were required to work a minimum of thirty hours a week in order to be eligible for earnings supplements and health and child care subsidies. All participants had access to career counseling and temporary community service jobs. Drawing on evidence from surveys, public records of employment and earnings, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observation, Higher Ground tells the story of this ambitious three-year social experiment and evaluates how participants fared relative to a control group. The results were highly encouraging. Poverty rates declined among families that participated in the program. Employment and earnings increased among participants who were not initially working full-time, relative to their counterparts in a control group. For those who had faced just one significant barrier to employment (such as a lack of access to child care or a spotty employment history), these gains lasted years after the program ended. Increased income, combined with New Hope’s subsidies for child care and health care, brought marked improvements to the well-being and development of participants’ children. Enrollment in child care centers increased, and fewer medical needs went unmet. Children performed better in school and exhibited fewer behavioral problems, and gains were particularly dramatic for boys, who are at the greatest risk for poor academic performance and behavioral disorders.

As America takes stock of the successes and shortcomings of the Clinton-era welfare reforms, the authors convincingly demonstrate why New Hope could be a model for state and national policies to assist the working poor. Evidence based and insightfully written, Higher Ground illuminates how policymakers can make work pay for families struggling to escape poverty.

GREG J. DUNCAN is the Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.

ALETHA C. HUSTON is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Child Development in the department of human ecology at the University of Texas, Austin and associate director of the Population Research Center.

THOMAS S. WEISNER is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The vast disparities in college attendance and graduation rates between students from different class backgrounds is a growing social concern. Economic Inequality and Higher Education investigates the connection between income inequality and unequal access to higher education, and proposes solutions that the state and federal governments and schools themselves can undertake to make college accessible to students from all backgrounds.

Economic Inequality and Higher Education convenes experts from the fields of education, economics, and public policy to assess the barriers that prevent low-income students from completing college. For many students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, the challenge isn’t getting into college, but getting out with a degree. Helping this group will require improving the quality of education in the community colleges and lower-tier public universities they are most likely to attend. Documenting the extensive disjuncture between the content of state-mandated high school testing and college placement exams, Michael Kirst calls for greater alignment between K-12 and college education. Amanda Pallais and Sarah Turner examine barriers to access at elite universities for low-income students—including tuition costs, lack of information, and poor high school records—as well as recent initiatives to increase socioeconomic diversity at private and public universities. Top private universities have increased the level and transparency of financial aid, while elite public universities have focused on outreach, mentoring, and counseling, and both sets of reforms show signs of success. Ron Ehrenberg notes that financial aid policies in both public and private universities have recently shifted towards merit-based aid, away from the need-based aid that is most helpful to low-income students. Ehrenberg calls on government policy makers to create incentives for colleges to increase their representation of low-income students.

Higher education is often vaunted as the primary engine of upward mobility. Instead, as inequality in America rises, colleges may be reproducing income disparities from one generation to the next. Economic Inequality and Higher Education illuminates this worrisome trend and suggests reforms that educational institutions and the government must implement to make the dream of a college degree a reality for all motivated students.

STACY DICKERT-CONLIN is associate professor of economics at Michigan State University.

ROSS RUBENSTEIN is associate professor of public administration at Syracuse University and a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research.

CONTRIBUTORS: Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Ross Rubenstein, Eric P. Bettinger, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Dan Goldhaber, Robert Haveman, Michael Kirst, Bridget Terry Long, Amanda Pallais, Gretchen K. Peri, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Sarah E. Turner, and Kathryn Wilson.

More than ever, the economic health of a country depends upon the skills, knowledge, and capacities of its people. How does a person acquire these human assets and how can we promote their development? Securing the Future assembles an interdisciplinary team of scholars to investigate the full range of factors—pediatric, psychological, social, and economic—that bear on a child's development into a well-adjusted, economically productive member of society. A central purpose of the volume is to identify sound interventions that will boost human assets, particularly among the disadvantaged. The book provides a comprehensive evaluation of current initiatives and offers a wealth of new suggestions for effective public and private investments in child development.

While children from affluent, highly educated families have good quality child care and an expensive education provided for them, children from poor families make do with informal child care and a public school system that does not always meet their needs. How might we best redress this growing imbalance? The contributors to this volume recommend policies that treat academic attainment together with psychological development and social adjustment. Mentoring programs, for example, promote better school performance by first fostering a young person's motivation to learn. Investments made early in life, such as preschool education, are shown to have the greatest impact on later learning for the least cost.

In their focus upon children, however, the authors do not neglect the important links between generations. Poverty and inequality harm the development of parents and children alike. Interventions that empower parents to fight for better services and better schools are also of great benefit to their children.

Securing the Future shows how investments in child development are both a means to an end and an end in themselves. They benefit the child directly and they also help that child contribute to the well-being of society. This book points us toward more effective strategies for promoting the economic success and the social cohesion of future generations.

SHELDON DANZIGER is Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy and co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.
 
JANE WALDFOGEL is professor of social work and public affairs at the Columbia University School of Social Work and research associate at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics.

CONTRIBUTORS: Debra Donahoe, Jacquelynne S. Eccles,  James J. Jeckman,  Robert S. Kahn,  Thomas J. Kane,  Lance Lochner,  Lisa M. Lynch,  Melvin L. Oliver,  Hillard Pouncy,  Craig T. Ramey,  Sharon Landesman Ramey,  Robert J. Sampson,  Margaret Beale Spencer, Dena Phillips Swanson,  Marta Tienda,  Allan Wigfield,  Barry Zuckerman, M.D.

A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building

Inequality has been on the rise in America for more than two decades. This socially divisive trend began in the economic doldrums of the 1970s and continued through the booming 1980s, when surging economic tides clearly failed to lift all ships. Instead, escalating inequality in both individual earnings and family income widened the gulf between rich and poor and led to the much-publicized decline of the middle class. Uneven Tides brings together a distinguished group of economists to confront the crucial questions about this unprecedented rise in inequality. Just how large and pervasive was it? What were its principal causes? And why did it continue in the 1980s, when previous periods of national economic growth have generally reduced inequality?

Reviewing the best current evidence, the essays in Uneven Tides show that rising inequality is a complex phenomenon, the result of a web of circumstances inherent in the nation's current industrial, social, and political situation. Once attributed to the rising supply of inexperienced workers—as baby boomers, new immigrants, and women entered the labor market—the growing inequality in individual earnings is revealed in Uneven Tides to be the direct result of the economy's increasing demand for skilled workers. The authors explore many of the possible causes of this trend, including the employment shift from manufacturing to the service sector, the heightened importance of technology in the workplace, the decline of unionization, and the intensified efforts to compete in a global marketplace. Uneven Tides also examines the equally dramatic growth in the inequality of family income, and reviews the effects of family size, the age and education of household heads, and the transition to both two-earner and single-parent families. Although these demographic shifts played a role, what emerges most clearly is an understanding of the powerful influence of public policy, as increasingly regressive taxes, declining welfare benefits, and a stagnant minimum wage continue to amplify the effects of market forces on income.

With the rise in inequality now much in the headlines, it is clear that our nation's ability to reverse these shifting currents requires deeper understanding of their causes and consequences. Uneven Tides is the first book to get beyond the news stories to a clear analysis of the changing fortunes of America's families. It should be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in the economic underpinnings of the country's social problems.

SHELDON DANZIGER is professor of social work and public policy and faculty associate in population studies at the University of Michigan.

PETER GOTTSCHALK is professor of economics at Boston College, and research affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

Trust plays a pervasive role in social affairs, even sustaining acts of cooperation among strangers who have no control over each other's actions. But the full importance of trust is rarely acknowledged until it begins to break down, threatening the stability of social relationships once taken for granted. Trust in Society uses the tools of experimental psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to shed light on the many functions trust performs in social and political life. The authors discuss different ways of conceptualizing trust and investigate the empirical effects of trust in a variety of social settings, from the local and personal to the national and institutional.

Drawing on experimental findings, this book examines how people decide whom to trust, and how a person proves his own trustworthiness to others. Placing trust in a person can be seen as a strategic act, a moral response, or even an expression of social solidarity. People often assume that strangers are trustworthy on the basis of crude social affinities, such as a shared race, religion, or hometown. Likewise, new immigrants are often able to draw heavily upon the trust of prior arrivals—frequently kin—to obtain work and start-up capital.

Trust in Society explains how trust is fostered among members of voluntary associations—such as soccer clubs, choirs, and church groups—and asks whether this trust spills over into other civic activities of wider benefit to society. The book also scrutinizes the relationship between trust and formal regulatory institutions, such as the law, that either substitute for trust when it is absent, or protect people from the worst consequences of trust when it is misplaced. Moreover, psychological research reveals how compliance with the law depends more on public trust in the motives of the police and courts than on fear of punishment.

The contributors to this volume demonstrate the growing analytical sophistication of trust research and its wide-ranging explanatory power. In the interests of analytical rigor, the social sciences all too often assume that people act as atomistic individuals without regard to the interests of others. Trust in Society demonstrates how we can think rigorously and analytically about the many aspects of social life that cannot be explained in those terms.

KAREN S. COOK is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Bacharach, Jean Ensminger, Diego Gambetta, Robert Gibbons, Russell Hardin, Carol A. Heimer, Jack Knight, Roderick M. Kramer, Gerry Mackie, David M. Messick, Gary Miller, Victor Nee, Jimy Sanders, Dietlind Stolle, Tom R. Tyler, Toshio Yamagishi.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust