Awarded Best Book in Urban Affairs Published in 1997 / 1998 by the Urban Affairs Association.

One of Choice magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 1997

"[An] alarming report, a rigorous study packed with charts, tables, 1990 census data and [Jargowsky's] own extensive field work.... His careful analysis of enterprise zones, job-creation strategies, local economic development schemes and housing and tax policies rounds out an essential handbook for policy makers, a major contribution to public debate over ways to reverse indigence." —Publishers Weekly

"A data-rich description and a conceptually innovative explanation of the spread of neighborhood poverty in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Urban scholars and policymakers alike should find Jargowsky's compelling arguments thought-provoking."—Library Journal

"A powerful book that allows us to really understand how ghettos have been changing over time and the forces behind these changes. It should be required reading of anyone who cares about urban poverty." —David Ellwood, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Poverty and Place documents the geographic spread of the nation's ghettos and shows how economic shifts have had a particularly devastating impact on certain regions, particularly in the rust-belt states of the Midwest. Author Paul Jargowsky's thoughtful analysis of the causes of ghetto formation clarifies the importance of widespread urban trends, particularly those changes in the labor and housing markets that have fostered income inequality and segregated the rich from the poor. Jargowsky also examines the sources of employment that do exist for ghetto dwellers, and describes how education and family structure further limit their prospects. Poverty and Place shows how the spread of high poverty neighborhoods has particularly trapped members of poor minorities, who account for nearly four out of five ghetto residents. Poverty and Place sets forth the facts necessary to inform the public understanding of the growth of concentrated poverty, and confronts essential questions about how the spiral of urban decay in our nation's cities can be reversed.

PAUL A. JARGOWSKY is associate professor of political economy in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Texas, Dallas.

"Contemporary American politics are riven by elite polarization and rising inequality. This 'state of the art' volume on inequality and American democracy succeeds admirably in linking rigorous scholarship to transcendently important questions about political participation and governmental responsiveness. By synthesizing and evaluating previous studies and outlining an agenda for future research, its superb contributors demonstrate brilliantly how political science, and social science more generally, can once again grapple with fundamental issues of democratic performance."
-THOMAS E. MANN, W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow, The Brookings Institution

"The American Political Science Association rarely takes positions on the institutional issues of governance and politics that are studied by its academic membership. Now, for the first time in more than fifty years, the APSA has spoken with a clear, concise, and tough examination of social and political inequality and its impact on American democracy. Inequality and American Democracy, by a group of the most eminent political scholars, is an expansion of the APSA report. The essays evaluate a massive body of research, and come to the collective conclusion that economic and political inequalities are persistent and rising, and that they threaten our ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government. The research is thorough, the pedigree of the authors impeccable, the conclusions compelling. The book offers a blueprint for future scholarship. There are no easy answers in the realms of political reforms and social policy. But this lively and penetrating volume makes it clear that the problems are neither exaggerated nor trivial, and should command the attention and focus of policymakers, pundits, journalists, students, and scholars alike."
-NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

In the twentieth century, the United States ended some of its most flagrant inequalities. The "rights revolution" ended statutory prohibitions against women’s suffrage and opened the doors of voting booths to African Americans. Yet a more insidious form of inequality has emerged since the 1970s—economic inequality—which appears to have stalled and, in some arenas, reversed progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy. In Inequality and American Democracy, editors Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol headline a distinguished group of political scientists in assessing whether rising economic inequality now threatens hard-won victories in the long struggle to achieve political equality in the United States.

Inequality and American Democracy addresses disparities at all levels of the political and policy-making process. Kay Lehman Scholzman, Benjamin Page, Sidney Verba, and Morris Fiorina demonstrate that political participation is highly unequal and strongly related to social class. They show that while economic inequality and the decreasing reliance on volunteers in political campaigns serve to diminish their voice, middle class and working Americans lag behind the rich even in protest activity, long considered the political weapon of the disadvantaged. Larry Bartels, Hugh Heclo, Rodney Hero, and Lawrence Jacobs marshal evidence that the U.S. political system may be disproportionately responsive to the opinions of wealthy constituents and business. They argue that the rapid growth of interest groups and the increasingly strict party-line voting in Congress imperils efforts at enacting policies that are responsive to the preferences of broad publics and to their interests in legislation that extends economic and social opportunity. Jacob Hacker, Suzanne Mettler, and Dianne Pinderhughes demonstrate the feedbacks of government policy on political participation and inequality. In short supply today are inclusive public policies like the G.I. Bill, Social Security legislation, the War on Poverty, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that changed the American political climate, mobilized interest groups, and altered the prospect for initiatives to stem inequality in the last fifty years.

Inequality and American Democracy tackles the complex relationships between economic, social, and political inequality with authoritative insight, showcases a new generation of critical studies of American democracy, and highlights an issue of growing concern for the future of our democratic society.

LAWRENCE R. JACOBS is Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

THEDA SKOCPOL is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Larry M. Bartels, Morris P. Fiorina, Jacob S. Hacker, Hugh Heclo, Rodney E. Hero, Suzanne Mettler, Benjamin I. Page, Dianne Pinderhughes, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba.

The American workforce and the American workplace are rapidly changing—in ways that make them increasingly incompatible. Advances in automation and telecommunications have eliminated many jobs based on routine tasks and muscle power and fueled the demand for employees who can understand and apply new technologies. But, as Earl Hunt convincingly demonstrates in Will We Be Smart Enough?, such “smart” employees will be in dangerously short supply unless fundamental changes are made to our educational and vocational systems.

Will We Be Smart Enough? combines cognitive theory, demographic projections, and psychometric research to measure the capabilities of tomorrow’s workforce against the needs of tomorrow’s workplace. Characterized by sophisticated machinery, instant global communication, and continuous reorganization, the workplace will call for people to fuse multiple responsibilities, adapt quickly to new trends, and take a creative approach to problem solving. Will Americans be able to meet the difficult and unprecedented challenges brought about by these innovations? Hunt examines data from demographic sources and a broad array of intelligence tests, whose fairness and validity he judiciously assesses. He shows that the U.S. labor force will be increasingly populated by older workers, who frequently lack the cognitive flexibility required by rapid change, and by racial and ethnic minorities, who have so far not fully benefitted from the nation’s schools to develop the cognitive skills necessary in a technologically advanced workplace.

At the heart of Will We Be Smart Enough? lies the premise that this forecast can be altered, and that cognitive skills can be widely and successfully taught. Hunt applies psychological principles of learning and cognitive science to a variety of experimental teaching programs, and shows how the information revolution, which has created such rapid change in the workplace, can also be used to transform the educational process and nurture the skills that the workplace of the future will require. Will We Be Smart Enough? answers naysayers who pronounce so many people “cognitively disadvantaged” by suggesting that new forms of education can provide workers with enhanced skills and productive employment in the twenty-first century.

"Hunt's book provides succinct, lucid presentations of our best scientific understandings of thinking, intelligence, job performance, and how to measure them. Only by comprehending and applying these understandings to develop sound educational and instructional strategies can we create a capable workforce for the digital age." —John T. Bruer, President, James S. McDonnell Foundation

"Earl Hunt applies keys insights from cognitive psychology and from the psychology of measurement to issues of workers and the workplace. His book constitutes a valuable contribution to, and synthesis of, an important area of study." —Howard Gardner, Harvard Project Zero

Will We Be Smart Enough? and The Bell Curve Controversy

What about [The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray] caused The New York Times to refer to it as the most controversial book of 1994, and to Murray as the most dangerous conservative in America? The answer is that they took an extreme position on a number of controversial issues [regarding intelligence and genetics]....My conclusion is that we have to do something to increase the amount of cognitive skills in the coming workforce and that, in many cases, we know what to do. Herrnstein and Murray claim that nothing can be done. I disagree....When it comes to improving the cognitive skills of the workforce, this is an area where everyone, whites and blacks, Latinos and Anglos, government programs and private enterprise, has got to get their act together. We do not know the perfect way to proceed. We do know how do some things that will help. Let us make the effort (and spend the money) to do them. —from the Afterword

EARL HUNT is professor of psychology and adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Washington.

A very important contribution to the field of labor economics, and in particular to the understanding of the labor market forworkers with relatively low skill levels. I think we have the sense that the market looks bad, but haven't been clear on how bad it is, or how it got that way. What Employers Want provides some of the answers and identifies the important questions. It is essential reading. —Jeffrey S. Zax, University of Colorado at Boulder

The substantial deterioration in employment and earnings among the nation's less-educated workers, especially minorities and younger males in the nation's big cities, has been tentatively ascribed to a variety of causes: an increase in required job skills, the movement of companies from the cities to the suburbs, and a rising unwillingness to hire minority job seekers. What Employers Want is the first book to replace conjecture about today's job market with first-hand information gleaned from employers about who gets hired. Drawn from asurvey of over 3,000 employers in four major metropolitan areas—Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, and Detroit—this volume provides a wealth of data on what jobs are available to the less-educated, in what industries, what skills they require, where they are located, what they pay, and how they are filled.

The evidence points to a dramatic surge in suburban, white-collar jobs. The manufacturing industry—once a steady employer of blue-collar workers—has been eclipsed by the expanding retail trade and service industries, where the vast majority of jobs are in clerical, managerial, or sales positions. Since manufacturing establishments have been the most likely employers to move from the central cities to the suburbs, the shortage of jobs for low-skill urban workers is particularly acute. In the central cities, the problem is compounded and available jobs remain vacant because employers increasingly require greater cognitive and social skills as well as specific job-related experience. Holzer reveals the extent to which minorities are routinely excluded by employer recruitment and screening practices that rely heavily on testing, informal referrals, and stable work histories. The inaccessible location and discriminatory hiring patterns of suburban employers further limit the hiring of black males in particular, while earnings, especially for minority females, remain low.

Proponents of welfare reform often assume that stricter work requirements and shorter eligibility periods will effectively channel welfare recipients toward steady employment and off federal subsidies. What Employers Want directly challenges this premise and demonstrates that only concerted efforts to close the gap between urban employers and inner city residents can produce healthy levels of employment in the nation's cities. Professor Holzer outlines the measures that will benecessary—targeted education and training programs, improved transportation and job placement, heightened enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, and aggressive job creation strategies. Repairing urban labor markets will not be easy. This book shows why.

HARRY J. HOLZER is currently Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and professor of economics at Michigan State University.

A Volume in the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality

Winner of the 2000 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

"This pathbreaking book will be required reading for both the specialist in immigration and the general reader wanting an introduction to the subject. The multidisciplinary authors provide an overview of the field, a synthesis of the theoretical approaches, and cutting edge new data. It is an engaging dialogue across disciplines on one of the most important issues in our society."
MARY WATERS, Harvard University

"Considering the recent prominence of immigration in the national consciousness and the vast literature now being published on immigration, now is the right time to take stock of our understanding of the central issues. The Handbook of International Migration will be an indispensable reference work on one of the next century's most important issues."
-DEMETRI PAPADEMETRIOU, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The historic rise in international migration over the past thirty years has brought a tide of new immigrants to the United States from Asia, South America, and other parts of the globe. Their arrival has reverberated throughout American society, prompting an outpouring of scholarship on the causes and consequences of the new migrations. The Handbook of International Migration gathers the best of this scholarship in one volume to present a comprehensive overview of the state of immigration research in this country, bringing coherence and fresh insight to this fast growing field.

The contributors to The Handbook of International Migration—a virtual who's who of immigration scholars—draw upon the best social science theory and demographic research to examine the effects and implications of immigration in the United States. The dramatic shift in the national background of today's immigrants away from primarily European roots has led many researchers to rethink traditional theories of assimilation,and has called into question the usefulness of making historical comparisons between today's immigrants and those of previous generations.

Part I of the Handbook examines current theories of international migration, including the forces that motivate people to migrate, often at great financial and personal cost. Part II focuses on how immigrants are changed after their arrival, addressing such issues as adaptation, assimilation, pluralism, and socioeconomic mobility. Finally, Part III looks at the social, economic, and political effects of the surge of new immigrants on American society. Here the Handbook explores how the complex politics of immigration have become intertwined with economic perceptions and realities, racial and ethnic divisions,and international relations.

A landmark compendium of richly nuanced investigations, The Handbook of International Migration will be the major reference work on recent immigration to this country and will enhance the development of a truly interdisciplinary field of international migration studies.

CHARLES HIRSCHMAN is professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

PHILIP KASINITZ is professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

JOSH DEWIND is program director of the Social Science Research Council and professor of anthropology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

CONTRIBUTORS: Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, Josh DeWind, Richard Alba, Susan B. Carter, Thomas J. Espenshade, Reynolds Farley, Walter C. Farrell Jr., Nancy Foner, Rachel M. Friedberg, Herbert J. Gans, Gary Gerstle, Nina Glick Schiller, Chandra Guinn, John Higham, Gregory A. Huber, Jennifer Hunt, James H. Johnson Jr., David E. López, Douglas S. Massey, John Hull Mollenkopf, Victor Nee, Joel Perlmann, Patricia R. Pessar, David Plotke, Alejandro Portes, Rebeca Raijman, Nestor Rodriguez, Rubén G. Rumbaut, George J. Sánchez, Richard Sutch, Marta Tienda, Roger Waldinger, Min Zhou, and Aristide R. Zolberg.

"Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better presents a clear picture of the challenges that low- income workers and their families face after welfare reform, and of potential policy changes that could improve their economic prospects. The team of authors is terrific-all are widely known and highly respected in their fields. And the papers are all valuable, whether they simply review previous work or break new empirical ground."
-HARRY J. HOLZER,professor of public policy, Georgetown University

"Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better is the first book by accomplished scholars based on the controversial assumption that encouraging and rewarding work is the foundation of the nation's social policy for the poor. Given the prestige of the editors and authors, the quality of writing, and the originality of thought and proposals, anyone interested in the next generation of policies to help the poor should start with this seminal volume."
-RON HASKINS, senior fellow and codirector, Center on Children and Families, The Brookings Institution

"More than fifteen years have passed since welfare reform and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit dramatically changed the safety net for low-income families with children. The United States has largely made a transition to a work-based safety net-where public assistance is targeted to working (rather than nonworking) families. In Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better, a highly-qualified group of authors provides wide-ranging analyses and discussion that is evidence based, forward looking, and outward looking. They explore topics such as the consequences of a work-based safety net for adults and children and the identification of groups left behind by the work-based safety net. The result is a highly readable, relevant, and exceedingly important book for anyone interested in U.S. domestic policy."
-HILARY HOYNES, professor of economics, University of California, Davis

Work first. That is the core idea behind the 1996 welfare reform legislation. It sounds appealing, but according to Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better, it collides with an exceptionally difficult reality. The degree to which work provides a way out of poverty depends greatly on the ability of low-skilled people to maintain stable employment and make progress toward an income that provides an adequate standard of living. This forward-looking volume examines eight areas of the safety net where families are falling through and describes how current policies and institutions could evolve to enhance the self-sufficiency of low-income families.

David Neumark analyzes a range of labor market policies and finds overwhelming evidence that the minimum wage is ineffective in promoting self-sufficiency. Neumark suggests the Earned Income Tax Credit is a much more promising policy to boost employment among single mothers and family incomes. Greg Duncan, Lisa Gennetian, and Pamela Morris find no evidence that encouraging parents to work leads to better parenting, improved psychological health, or more positive role models for children. Instead, the connection between parental work and child achievement is linked to parents’ improved access to quality child care. Rebecca Blank and Brian Kovak document an alarming increase in the number of single mothers who receive neither wages nor public assistance and who are significantly more likely to suffer from medical problems of their own or of a child. Time caps and work hour requirements embedded in benefits policies leave some mothers unable to work and ineligible for cash benefits.

Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick identify another gap: low-income families tend to lose financial support and health coverage long before they earn enough to access employer-based benefits and tax provisions. They propose building “institutional bridges” that minimize discontinuities associated with changes in employment, earnings, or family structure. Steven Raphael addresses a particularly troubling weakness of the work-based safety net—its inadequate provision for the large number of individuals who are or were incarcerated in the United States. He offers tractable suggestions for policy changes that could ease their transition back into non-institutionalized society and the labor market.

Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better shows that the “work first” approach alone isn’t working and suggests specific ways the social welfare system might be modified to produce greater gains for vulnerable families.

CAROLYN J. HEINRICH is director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, professor of public affairs and affiliated professor of economics, and associate director of research and training at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

JOHN KARL SCHOLZ is professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

CONTRIBUTORS: Jayanta Bhattacharya, Rebecca M. Blank, Greg J. Duncan, David N. Figlio, Lisa Gennetian, Janet C. Gornick, Brian K. Kovak, Marcia K. Meyers, Pamela Morris, David Neumark, Steven Raphael, Peter Richmond, R. Kent Weaver.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Drawn from an extensive two-decade longitudinal survey of American families, Succeeding Generations traces a representative group of America's children from their early years through young adulthood. It evaluates the many background factors that are most influential in determining how much education children will obtain, whether or not they will become teen parents, and how economically active they will be when they reach their twenties. Succeeding Generations demonstrates how our children's future has been placed at risk by social and economic conditions such as fractured families, a troubled economy, rising poverty rates, and neighborhood erosion. The authors also pinpoint some significant causes of children's later success, emphasizing the importance of parents' education and, despite the apparent loss of time spent with children, the generally positive influence of maternal employment. Haveman and Wolfe supplement their research with a comprehensive review of the many debates among economists, sociologists, developmental psychologists, and other experts on how best to improve the lot of America's children.

"A state-of-the-art investigation of the determinants of children's success in the United States....Clearly written, highly readable, and compelling."—Contemporary Sociology

"Haveman and Wolfe are professors of economics who bring sophisticated statistical and econometric techniques to the analysis of the economic and educational success of children as they progress into young adulthood."—Choice

"This study is one of the most comprehensive of its kind, in part because the researchers collected detailed information about a wide range of children each year for more than two decades." —Wisconsin State Journal

"The research at the core of this book addresses critically important questions in social science...an important contribution to the literature." —Robert Plotnick, University of Washington

ROBERT H. HAVEMAN is John Bascom Professor in the department of economics and at the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

BARBARA L. WOLFE is professor of economics and preventative medicine, and professor at La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The search for reliable information on the well-being of America's young is vital to designing programs to improve their lives. Yet social scientists are concerned that many measurements of children's physical and emotional health are inadequate, misleading, or outdated, leaving policymakers ill-informed. Indicators of Children's Well-Being is an ambitious inquiry into current efforts to monitor children from the prenatal period through adolescence. Working with the most up-to-date statistical sources, experts from multiple disciplines assess how data on physical development, education, economic security, family and neighborhood conditions, and social behavior are collected and analyzed, what findings they reveal, and what improvements are needed to create a more comprehensive and policy-relevant system of measurement.

Today's climate of welfare reform has opened new possibilities for program innovation and experimentation, but it has also intensified the need for a clearly defined and wide-ranging empirical framework to pinpoint where help is needed and what interventions will succeed. Indicators of Children's Well-Being emphasizes the importance of accurate studies that address real problems. Essays on children's material well-being show why income data must be supplemented with assessments of housing, medical care, household expenditure, food consumption, and education. Other contributors urge refinements to existing survey instruments such as the Census and the Current Population Survey. The usefulness of records from human service agencies, child welfare records, and juvenile court statistics is also evaluated.

ROBERT M. HAUSER is Vilas Research Professor of Sociology and affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

BRETT V. BROWN is research associate at Child Trends, Inc., Washington, D.C.

WILLIAM R. PROSSER is senior policy analyst who is retired from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.

CONTRIBUTORS: J. Lawrence Aber, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Thomas J. Corbett, Claudia J. Coulton, Greg J. Duncan, David J. Eggebeen, Arthur B. Elster, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Robert M. Goerge, Dennis P. Hogan, Mary Elizabeth Hughes, Aurora Jackson, Stephanie M. Jones, Thomas J. Kane, Bruce P. Kennedy, Daniel Koretz, Paula Lantz, John M. Love, Susan E. Mayer, Timothy J. McGourthy, Marc L. Miringoff, Marque-Luisa Miringoff, Kristin A. Moore, Allyn M. Mortimer, Leslie Moscow, Jane Mosley, Melissa Partin, Deborah A. Phillips, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Gary D. Sandefur, James Sears, Judith R. Smith, Matthew Stagner, Barbara Starfield, Ruby Takanishi, Barbara L. Wolfe.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Shows why social statistics are important and how they are put to use in the interest of the public. Written by a sociologist who serves as Director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago, the book illustrates the many applications social statistics have for governmental agencies at the federal, state, and local levels; for the business community; for labor unions; for educators and researchers; and for the general public. The author provides a description of the major bodies of social statistical information, including population; births, deaths, and health; marriage, divorce, and the family; education; the labor force; crime; consumption and the consumer; recreation; governments; and public opinion polls.

PHILIP M. HAUSER is Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology and director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago.

A volume in the Social Science Frontiers series, which are occasional publications reviewing new fields for social science development.

These occasional publications seek to summarize recent work being done in particular areas of social research, to review new developments in the field, and to indicate issues needing further investigation. The publications are intended to help orient those concerned with developing current research programs and broadening the use of social science in the policy-making process.

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