The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality
 

"For the first time, Urban Inequality brings together solid evidence on the intersecting effects of skills, job availability, geographic segregation, and racism on the socioeconomic outcomes of American minority groups. This landmark study should quickly become a classic, and should inform discussions about public policy for years to come."
- DAVID O. SEARS, UCLA

"This important book investigates urban inequality by looking in detail at the barriers of race, gender, and class in the United States. The team of leading scholars clearly shows us how the search for decent housing, a living wage job, or simply walking down the street differs dramatically between the urban haves and have-nots. Urban Inequality belongs on the bookshelves of mayors, community organizers, and advocates."
- HUGH B. PRICE, National Urban League

"W.E.B. DuBois said that the problem of the twentieth century would be the color line. How sad that we enter the twenty-first century with a racial hierarchy still intact, putting those of African descent at the bottom. But how encouraging that an interdisciplinary team has taken this comprehensive look at many of the factors holding the racial hierarchy in place. Urban Inequality and the larger Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality are major accomplishments."
- PAULA ENGLAND, University of Pennsylvania

"This is an important volume. Based on careful analyses of rich sources of original data, the authors of the various chapters in Urban Inequality provide fresh insights on the interlocking factors that generate and sustain inequality in our nation's metropolises. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the urban social and economic divide."
- WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Harvard University

"The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality is one of the most innovative and important survey research projects of the 1990s. It moves simultaneously across disciplinary, geographic, and racial boundaries; it extends the range of behavioral social science into structures and cultures. This collection shows off the breadth, flexibility, and substantive value of the Multi-City data when they are in the hands of people who are among our best analysts."
- JENNIFER HOCHSCHILD, Harvard University

Despite today's booming economy, secure work and upward mobility remain out of reach for many central-city residents. Urban Inequality presents an authoritative new look at the racial and economic divisions that continue to beset our nation's cities. Drawing upon a landmark survey of employers and households in four U.S. metropolises, Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles, the study links both sides of the labor market, inquiring into the job requirements and hiring procedures of employers, as well as the skills, housing situation, and job search strategies of workers. Using this wealth of evidence, the authors discuss the merits of rival explanations of urban inequality. Do racial minorities lack the skills and education demanded by employers in today's global economy? Have the jobs best matched to the skills of inner-city workers moved to outlying suburbs? Or is inequality the result of racial discrimination in hiring, pay, and housing? Each of these explanations may provide part of the story, and the authors shed new light on the links between labor market disadvantage, residential segregation, and exclusionary racial attitudes.

In each of the four cities, old industries have declined and new commercial centers have sprung up outside the traditional city limits, while new immigrant groups have entered all levels of the labor market. Despite these transformations, longstanding hostilities and lines of segregation between racial and ethnic communities are still apparent in each city. This book reveals how the disadvantaged position of many minority workers is compounded by racial antipathies and stereotypes that count against them in their search for housing and jobs.

Until now, there has been little agreement on the sources of urban disadvantage and no convincing way of adjudicating between rival theories. Urban Inequality aims to advance our understanding of the causes of urban inequality as a first step toward ensuring that the nation's cities can prosper in the future without leaving their minority residents further behind.

ALICE O'CONNOR is associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

CHRIS TILLY is University Professor of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

LAWRENCE D. BOBO is professor of sociology and Afro-American studies at Harvard Universit

CONTRIBUTORS:  Irene Browne, Camille Zubrinsky Charles.  Sheldon Danziger,  Luis M. Falcon,  Reynolds Farley,  Roger B. Hammer,  Tom Hertz,  Harry J. Holzer,  Ivy Kennelly,  Joleen Kirschenman, James R. Kluegel,  Michael P. Massagli,  Edwin Melendez,  Philip Moss,  Julie E. Press, Leann M. Tigges.  Franklin D. Wilson.

A Volume in the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality

"For more than a hundred years, philanthropists have invested in social science because they thought the knowledge it produced would help solve social problems and improve the human condition. And indeed, social scientists sought to inform public debate and public action, pursuing agendas shaped by the famous 'social question" of labor and inequality. But, as Alice O'Connor shows in this splendid history, the relatienship between social science and philanthropy was not automatic. It could come unstuck when social scientists claimed their work was self-justifying as the pursuit of knowledge in itself, and also with political challenges to the idea of neutral (or liberal) expertise. O'Connor rightly reveals that this early history has shaped enduring orientations and oppositions, and she traces these into our era of think tanks and a new gospel of wealth. She also challenges us to ask again what social science is for in an era when inequality seems once again to be increasing, and to wonder whether its connection with philanthropy can be restored. Social Science for What? is important reading for twentieth-century history and it eloquently poses crucial questions for twenty-first century social science."
-CRAIG CALHOUN, Social Science Research Council

This discerning history celebrates an important legacy of the Progressive Era: the best advocates for social reform sought to maintain their objectivity. Then, as now, true idealists tried to steer clear of ideology. Everyone concerned about the relationship between the theory and the practice of social science should read Social Science for What?"
-NANCY FOLBRE, University of Massachusetts

"In this fine book, based on both insider knowledge and academic research, Alice O'Connor explains why the great liberal foundations have been bested by conservative 'think tanks.' And she argues, astutely, that there is only one way the liberal foundations can compete- by openly embracing the progressive values that animated early social science. Social Science for What? is a must for those interested in contemporary conservatism, philanthropy, and social science."
-LINDA GORDON, New York University

Much like today, the early twentieth century was a period of rising economic inequality and political polarization in America. But it was also an era of progressive reform—a time when the Russell Sage Foundation and other philanthropic organizations were established to promote social science as a way to solve the crises of industrial capitalism. In Social Science for What? Alice O’Connor relates the history of philanthropic social science, exploring its successes and challenges over the years, and asking how these foundations might continue to promote progressive social change in our own politically divided era.

The philanthropic foundations established in the early 1900s focused on research which, while intended to be objective, was also politically engaged. In addition to funding social science research, in its early years the Russell Sage Foundation also supported social work and advocated reforms on issues from child welfare to predatory lending. This reformist agenda shaped the foundation’s research priorities and methods. The Foundation’s landmark Pittsburgh Survey of wage labor, conducted in 1907-1908, involved not only social scientists but leaders of charities, social workers, and progressive activists, and was designed not simply to answer empirical questions, but to reframe the public discourse about industrial labor. After World War II, many philanthropic foundations disengaged from political struggles and shifted their funding toward more value-neutral, academic social inquiry, in the belief that disinterested research would yield more effective public policies. Consequently, these foundations were caught off guard in the 1970s and 1980s by the emergence of a network of right-wing foundations, which was successful in promoting an openly ideological agenda. In order to counter the political in-roads made by conservative organizations, O’Connor argues that progressive philanthropic research foundations should look to the example of their founders. While continuing to support the social science research that has contributed so much to American society over the past 100 years, they should be more direct about the values that motivate their research.  In this way, they will help foster a more democratic dialogue on important social issues by using empirical knowledge to engage fundamentally ethical concerns about rising inequality.

O’Connor’s message is timely: public-interest social science faces unprecedented challenges in this era of cultural warfare, as both liberalism and science itself have come under assault. Social Science for What? is a thought-provoking critique of the role of social science in improving society and an indispensable guide to how progressives can reassert their voice in the national political debate.

ALICE O’CONNOR is associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series

"On the Job brings together top researchers in the field to try to achieve a consistent reading of the many fragmentary data sources. On the one hand, some areas of disagreement remain. On the other hand, the effort is an invaluable contribution to understanding the evolution of the American employment relationship. David Neumark is to be congratulated for pulling together this comprehensive look at a very important topic."
-David I. Levine, University of California, Berkeley

In recent years, a flurry of reports on downsizing, outsourcing, and flexible staffing have created the impression that stable, long-term jobs are a thing of the past. According to conventional wisdom, workers can no longer count on building a career with a single employer, and job security is a rare prize. While there is no shortage of striking anecdotes to fuel these popular beliefs, reliable evidence is harder to come by. Researchers have yet to determine whether we are witnessing a sustained, economy-wide decline in the stability of American jobs, or merely a momentary rupture confined to a few industries and a few classes of workers.

On the Job launches a concerted effort to reconcile the conflicting evidence about job stability and security. The book examines the labor force as a whole, not merely the ousted middle managers who have attracted the most publicity. It looks at the situation of women as well as men, young workers as well as old, and workers on part-time, non-standard, or temporary work schedules. The evidence suggests that long-serving managers and professionals suffered an unaccustomed loss of job security in the 1990s, but there is less evidence of change for younger, newer recruits. The authors bring our knowledge of the labor market up to date, connecting current conditions in the labor market with longer-term trends that have evolved over the past two decades. They find that  layoffs in the early 1990s disrupted the implicit contract between employers and staff, but it is too soon to declare a permanent revolution in the employment relationship.

Having identified the trends, the authors seek to explain  them and to examine their possible consequences. If the bonds between employee and employer are weakening, who stands to benefit? Frequent job-switching can be a sign of success for a worker, if each job provides a stepping stone to something better, but research in this book shows that workers gained less from changing jobs in the 1980s and 1990s than in earlier decades. The authors also evaluate the third-party intermediaries, such as temporary help agencies, which profit from the new flexibility in the matching of workers and employers.

Besides opening up new angles on the evidence, the authors mark out common ground and pin-point those areas where gaps in our knowledge remain and popular belief runs ahead of reliable evidence. On the Job provides an authoritative basis for spotting the trends and interpreting the fall-out as U.S. employers and employees rethink the terms of their relationship.

DAVID NEUMARK is professor of economics at Michigan State University and research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

CONTRIBUTORS: Steven G. Allen, Annette Bernhardt, Peter Cappelli, Robert L. Clark, Henry S. Farber, Peter Gottschalk, Mark S. Handcock, Daniel Hansen, Susan N. Houseman, David A. Jaeger, Alec R. Levenson, Robert A. Moffitt, Martina Morris, Anne E. Polivka, Daniel Polsky, Sylvester J. Schieber, Stefanie R. Schmidt, Mark A. Scott, Ann Huff Stevens, Jay Stewart, Robert G. Valletta.

Inequality in income, earnings, and wealth has risen dramatically in the United States over the past three decades. Most research into this issue has focused on the causes—global trade, new technology, and economic policy—rather than the consequences of inequality. In Social Inequality, a group of the nation’s leading social scientists opens a wide-ranging inquiry into the social implications of rising economic inequality. Beginning with a critical evaluation of the existing research, they assess whether the recent run-up in economic inequality has been accompanied by rising inequality in social domains such as the quality of family and neighborhood life, equal access to education and health care, job satisfaction, and political participation.

Marcia Meyers and colleagues find that many low-income mothers cannot afford market-based child care, which contributes to inequality both at the present time—by reducing maternal employment and family income—and through the long-term consequences of informal or low-quality care on children’s educational achievement. At the other end of the educational spectrum, Thomas Kane links the growing inequality in college attendance to rising tuition and cuts in financial aid. Neil Fligstein and Taek-Jin Shin show how both job security and job satisfaction have decreased for low-wage workers compared with their higher-paid counterparts. Those who fall behind economically may also suffer diminished access to essential social resources like health care. John Mullahy, Stephanie Robert, and Barbara Wolfe discuss why higher inequality may lead to poorer health: wider inequality might mean increased stress-related ailments for the poor, and it might also be associated with public health care policies that favor the privileged. On the political front, Richard Freeman concludes that political participation has become more stratified as incomes have become more unequal. Workers at the bottom of the income scale may simply be too hard-pressed or too demoralized to care about political participation. Social Inequality concludes with a comprehensive section on the methodological problems involved in disentangling the effects of inequality from other economic factors, which will be of great benefit to future investigators.

While today’s widening inequality may be a temporary episode, the danger is that the current economic divisions may set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of social disadvantage. The most comprehensive review of this quandary to date, Social Inequality maps out a new agenda for research on inequality in America with important implications for public policy.

KATHRYN NECKERMAN is associate director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Suzanne Bianchi,  Henry E. Brady,  Coral Celeste,  Tiffani Chin,  Philip N. Cohen,  Sean Corcoran,  Janet Currie,  Paul DiMaggio,  Christine E. Eibner,  David T. Ellwood,  William N. Evans,  Neil Fligstein, Richard B. Freeman,  Jennifer Godwin,  Eszter Hargittai, Robert M. Hauser,  Robert Haveman, V. Joseph Hotz,  Michael Hout,  Christopher Jencks, Thomas J. Kane,  Meredith Kleykamp,  Gabriel S. Lenz,  Kara Levine,  Steven P. Martin,  Susan E. Mayer,  Marcia K. Meyers,  John Mullahy, Sheila E. Murray, Kei Nomaguchi, Lars Osberg, Anne R. Pebley, Meredith Phillips,  Sara Raley, Stephanie Robert,  Dan Rosenbaum,  Jake Rosenfeld, Howard Rosenthal,  Christopher Ruhm,  Gary Sandefur,  Narayan Sastry, Kay Lehman Schlozman,  John Karl Scholz,  Robert M. Schwab, Jonathan Schwabish, Steven Shafer.  Taek-Jin Shin,  Theda Skocpol, Timothy M. Smeeding,  Sidney Verba,  Andrea Voyer,  Jane Waldfogel,  Bruce Western,  Barbara Wolfe.

"Our commitment to the elimination of health disparities in the United States is greatly challenged by the impact of social and political forces on public health policy and implemen tation discussed so vividly in Disease Prevention as Social Change. Our success will depend upon our ability to better manage these forces."
-DAVID SATCHER, Poussaint-Satcher-Cosby Chair in Mental Health, director of the Center of Excellence on Health Disparities, Morehouse School of Medicine, and former Surgeon General of the United States

"Constance A. Nathanson illuminates how history, politics, ideology, and key actors shaped the varying responses to four major health threats over time in the United States, Britain, Canada, and France. Professionals, students, and other informed readers will gain from this ambitious and insightful book."
-DAVID MECHANIC, director and Rene Dubos University Professor, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, Rutgers

"A big, bold, riveting analysis of how communities respond to disease. Constance Nathanson's narrative sweeps across time and place, politics and culture, illness and public health. Disease Prevention as Social Change is required reading for scholars, professionals, and citizens interested in the health of nations."
-JAMES A. MORONE, professor of political science and urban studies, Brown University

From mad-cow disease and E. coli-tainted spinach in the food supply to anthrax scares and fears of a bird flu pandemic, national health threats are a perennial fact of American life. Yet not all crises receive the level of attention they seem to merit. The marked contrast between the U.S. government’s rapid response to the anthrax outbreak of 2001 and years of federal inaction on the spread of AIDS among gay men and intravenous drug users underscores the influence of politics and public attitudes in shaping the nation’s response to health threats. In Disease Prevention as Social Change, sociologist Constance Nathanson argues that public health is inherently political, and explores the social struggles behind public health interventions by the governments of four industrialized democracies.

Nathanson shows how public health policies emerge out of battles over power and ideology, in which social reformers clash with powerful interests, from dairy farmers to tobacco lobbyists to the Catholic Church. Comparing the history of four public health dilemmas—tuberculosis and infant mortality at the turn of the last century, and more recently smoking and AIDS—in the United States, France, Britain, and Canada, Nathanson examines the cultural and institutional factors that shaped reform movements and led each government to respond differently to the same health challenges. She finds that concentrated political power is no guarantee of government intervention in the public health domain. France, an archetypical strong state, has consistently been decades behind other industrialized countries in implementing public health measures, in part because political centralization has afforded little opportunity for the development of grassroots health reform movements. In contrast, less government centralization in America has led to unusually active citizen-based social movements that campaigned effectively to reduce infant mortality and restrict smoking. Public perceptions of health risks are also shaped by politics, not just science. Infant mortality crusades took off in the late nineteenth century not because of any sudden rise in infant mortality rates, but because of elite anxieties about the quantity and quality of working-class populations. Disease Prevention as Social Change also documents how culture and hierarchies of race, class, and gender have affected governmental action—and inaction—against particular diseases.

Informed by extensive historical research and contemporary fieldwork, Disease Prevention as Social Change weaves compelling narratives of the political and social movements behind modern public health policies. By comparing the vastly different outcomes of these movements in different historical and cultural contexts, this path-breaking book advances our knowledge of the conditions in which social activists can succeed in battles over public health.

CONSTANCE A. NATHANSON is a professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.

"Questions of trust, reciprocity, and social cooperation occupy a central place in contemporary social science research. Trust and Reciprocity is an excellent addition to this literature. Elinor Ostrom and James Walker have produced a first rate collection that significantly enhances our understanding of why cooperation levels vary so much across different social contexts. In addition, the contributors to this volume, leading scholars in their various disciplines, offer important insights into how the standard rational choice approach to these questions can be informed by experimental research. I know of no other book that provides such a thoughtful and comprehensive introduction to the experimental approach to trust and cooperation."
-JACK KNIGHT, Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in Arts and Sciences, Washington University

"This marvelous volume provides one-stop shopping for readers old and new to the trust literature. Each article builds substantively upon carefully reviewed past literature before proceeding in one of many pioneering directions. The combination of explorations into the cognitive, biological, and evolutionary foundations of trust, together with new experimental evidence, brings the trust literature right to the frontier of the most current research in social science."
-JEAN ENSMINGER, division chair for the humanities and social sciences and professor of anthropology, California Institute of Technology

Trust is essential to economic and social transactions of all kinds, from choosing a marriage partner, to taking a job, and even buying a used car. The benefits to be gained from such transactions originate in the willingness of individuals to take risks by placing trust in others to behave in cooperative and non-exploitative ways. But how do humans decide whether or not to trust someone? Using findings from evolutionary psychology, game theory, and laboratory experiments, Trust and Reciprocity examines the importance of reciprocal relationships in explaining the origins of trust and trustworthy behavior.

In Part I, contributor Russell Hardin argues that before one can understand trust one must account for the conditions that make someone trustworthy. Elinor Ostrom discusses evidence that individuals achieve outcomes better than those predicted by models of game theory based on purely selfish motivations. In Part II, the book takes on the biological foundations of trust. Frans de Waal illustrates the deep evolutionary roots of trust and reciprocity with examples from the animal world, such as the way chimpanzees exchange social services like grooming and sharing. Other contributors look at the links between evolution, cognition, and behavior. Kevin McCabe examines how the human mind processes the complex commitments that reciprocal relationships require, summarizing brain imaging experiments that suggest the frontal lobe region is activated when humans try to cooperate with their fellow humans. Acknowledging the importance of game theory as a theoretical model for examining strategic relationships, in Part III the contributors tackle the question of how simple game theoretic models must be extended to explain behavior in situations involving trust and reciprocity. Reviewing a range of experimental studies, Karen Cook and Robin Cooper conclude that trust is dependent on the complex relationships between incentives and individual characteristics, and must be examined in light of the social contexts which promote or erode trust. As an example, Catherine Eckel and Rick Wilson explore how people's cues, such as facial expressions and body language, affect whether others will trust them.

The divergent views in this volume are unified by the basic conviction that humans gain through the development of trusting relationships. Trust and Reciprocity advances our understanding of what makes people willing or unwilling to take the risks involved in building such relationships and why.

ELINOR OSTROM is Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and codirector of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, Bloomington.

JAMES WALKER is Professor of Economics and co-associate director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington.

CONTRIBUTORS: T.K. Ahn, Karen S. Cook, Robin M. Cooper, Frans B.M. de Waal, Catherine C. Eckel, James Henley, Russell Hardin, William T. Harbaugh, Kate Krause, Robert Kurzban, Margaret Levi, Steven G. Liday, Jr., Kevin A. McCabe, Tomonori Morikawa, John Orbell, David Schmidt, Vernon L. Smith, Lise Vesterlund, Rick K. Wilson, Toshio Yamagishi.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

Uses the case study of the California Industrial Accident Commission to explore issues in sociological jurisprudence. It traces the progression of the Commission from a welfare agency with broad discretion in policymaking and interpretation into a relatively passive arbitrator of industrial accident claim disputes. The author examines the effect of the elaboration of legal rules and doctrines, the significance of the procedural aspects of law, and the interplay of the legal process and institutional change. He then notes the conditions which will either permit or restrain a legal process that will remain highly responsive to social needs.

PHILIPPE NONET is a sociologist on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley and associate of the Center for the Study of Law and Society.

Winner of the 2007 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“This story of hope for both immigrants and native-born Americans is a well-researched, insightful, and illuminating study that provides compelling evidence to support a policy of homegrown human investment as a new priority. A timely, valuable addition to demographic and immigration studies. Highly recommended.”
-Choice 

"Dowell Myers has described a future full of hope-if as a nation we are able to understand the power of immigration, to reach understandings about our mutual societal responsibilities, and to unleash the full capabilities of immigrants who want to contribute to American society. It is an approach that is hopeful but is also entirely possible and indeed may be the only way that our nation can assure that its present prosperity and progress continue into the future."
-HENRY CISNEROS, executive chairman, CityView

"Always an incisive analyst of contemporary immigration, Dowell Myers moves the debate forward in this rigorous volume by highlighting the interconnected fates of the aging baby boomers and upwardly striving immigrants. His clear-eyed reading of the California experience shows how forging a new social contract between these groups can help us move from a politics of conflict over immigration to a politics of mutual advantage."
-JOHN MOLLENKOPF, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and director, Center for Urban Research, City University of New York Graduate Center

"In this immensely readable book, Dowell Myers probes the soft center of American politics and finds the solidity needed to erect a new social contract to bridge the divide between the largely white baby boom generation and the increasingly diverse group of younger Americans. With deft analysis and reasoning, he exposes the short-sightedness of current fears about immigration and the American future. Immigrants and Boomers is a book that will inform citizen and scholar alike about ways to move beyond contemporary impasses."
-RICHARD ALBA, Distinguished Professor, The State University of New York, Albany

"Immigrants and Boomers is a tour de force. Dowell Myers displays creative analytical acumen to delineate the mutual self-interests between aging, mostly white baby boom cohorts and highly diverse 'replacement' cohorts that are currently in school and entering the workforce. Comparing California's demographic and economic narratives since 1970 with those of the United States, Myers convincingly demonstrates how various facets of interdependencies between generations-schooling, work, child, and elderly care-warrant a renewed social contract that will serve the interests of both old and young, now and in the future. This is superb social policy analysis; heeding Dowell's recommendations is in the national interest."
-MARTA TIENDA, Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies and professor of sociology and public affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Virtually unnoticed in the contentious national debate over immigration is the significant demographic change about to occur as the first wave of the Baby Boom generation retires, slowly draining the workforce and straining the federal budget to the breaking point.  In this forward-looking new book, noted demographer Dowell Myers proposes a new way of thinking about the influx of immigrants and the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers. Myers argues that each of these two powerful demographic shifts may hold the keys to resolving the problems presented by the other.

Immigrants and Boomers looks to California as a bellwether state—where whites are no longer a majority of the population and represent just a third of residents under age twenty—to afford us a glimpse into the future impact of immigration on the rest of the nation. Myers opens with an examination of the roots of voter resistance to providing social services for immigrants. Drawing on detailed census data, Myers demonstrates that long-established immigrants have been far more successful than the public believes. Among the Latinos who make up the bulk of California’s immigrant population, those who have lived in California for over a decade show high levels of social mobility and use of English, and 50 percent of Latino immigrants become homeowners after twenty years. The impressive progress made by immigrant families suggests they have the potential to pick up the slack from aging boomers over the next two decades. The mass retirement of the boomers will leave critical shortages in the educated workforce, while shrinking ranks of middle-class tax payers and driving up entitlement expenditures. In addition, as retirees sell off their housing assets, the prospect of a generational collapse in housing prices looms. Myers suggests that it is in the boomers’ best interest to invest in the education and integration of immigrants and their children today in order to bolster the ranks of workers, taxpayers, and homeowners America they will depend on ten and twenty years from now.

In this compelling, optimistic book, Myers calls for a new social contract between the older and younger generations, based on their mutual interests and the moral responsibility of each generation to provide for children and the elderly. Combining a rich scholarly perspective with keen insight into contemporary political dilemmas, Immigrants and Boomers creates a new framework for understanding the demographic challenges facing America and forging a national consensus to address them.

DOWELL MYERS is professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California.

 

"The thoughtful contributors to this useful volume have provided a unique and comprehensive vision for the study of poverty. Laboring Below the Line is one of the most important publications on poverty and low-wage work in the last several decades. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in confronting the problems and challenges of inequality."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"This excellent volume is a welcome addition to the renewed stream of ethnographic examinations of the lives of America's poor. Laboring Below the Line concentrates on perennial issues of making a living by people in highly constrained circumstances, a subject not so central to many earlier ethnographies. It should be read by all those concerned with poverty policies as a corrective for the abstract and reductive models that dominate that field."
-LEE RAINWATER, professor of sociology emeritus, Harvard University

"Laboring Below The Line offers a much needed view of what people do to get by, raise families, get ahead, and grapple with issues of identity, esteem, and efficacy while laboring in a world that simultaneously demands and undervalues the work that they do. In establishing a dialogue between ethnographic and structural analysis, the authors remind us that the personal and the global can-indeed must-inform one another in research as well as in political action. They penetrate facile assumptions about the 'low-skill' nature of low-wage workers and work. They show how life chances are constrained by the growing inequities of global political economy, while recognizing the agency individuals do exercise in the workplace, the community, and in their own lives."
-ALICE O'CONNOR, associate professor of history, University of California, Santa Barbara

"For anyone hoping to move beyond the misleading stereotypes that dominate our culture, Laboring Below the Line offers rich portraits and analysis that take us deep into the everyday realities of labor and poverty in America. This indispensable book challenges conventional myths with accessible frontline research from the nation's leading scholars and shows new ways to confront and respond to America's enduring crisis."
-JOHN GILLIOM, associate professor of political science, Ohio University

As the distribution of wealth between rich and poor in the United States grew more and more unequal over the past twenty years, this economic gap assumed a life of its own in the popular culture. The news and entertainment media increasingly portrayed the lives of the poor with such stereotypes as the lazy welfare mother and the thuggish teen, offering Americans few ways to learn how the "other half" really lives. Laboring Below the Line works to bridge this gap by synthesizing a wide range of qualitative scholarship on the working poor. The result is a coherent, nuanced portrait of how life is lived below the poverty line, and a compelling analysis of the systemic forces in which poverty is embedded, and through which it is perpetuated.

Laboring Below the Line explores the role of interpretive research in understanding the causes and effects of poverty. Drawing on perspectives of the working poor, welfare recipients, and marginally employed men and women, the contributors—an interdisciplinary roster of ethnographers, oral historians, qualitative sociologists, and narrative analysts—dissect the life circumstances that affect the personal outlook, ability to work, and expectations for the future of these people. For example, Carol Stack views the work aspirations of an Oakland teenager for whom a job is important, even though it strains her academic performance. And Ruth Buchanan looks at low-wage telemarketing workers who are attempting to move up the economic ladder while balancing family, education, and other important commitments. What emerges is a compelling picture of low-wage workers—one that illustrates the precarious circumstances of individuals struggling with the economic conditions and institutions that surround them Each chapter also explores the capacity for economic survival from a different angle, with ancillary commentary complementing the ethnographies with perspectives from other fields of study, such as economics.

At this moment of governmental retrenchment, ethnography's complex, nonstereotypical portraits of individual people fighting against poverty are especially important. Laboring Below the Line reveals the ambiguities of real lives, the potential for individuals to change in unexpected ways, and the even greater intricacy of the collective life of a community.

FRANK MUNGER is professor of law and adjunct professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

CONTRIBUTORS: Frances Ansley, Ruth Buchanan, Aixa N. Cintron-Velez, Kathryn Edin, Michael Frisch, Joel F. Handler, Philip Harvey, Julia R. Henly, Sanders Korenman, Laura Lein, Timothy Nelson, Carl H. Nightingale, Saskia Sassen, Carol Stack, Lucie White.
 

"The Future of the Family is a singular contribution to our understanding of one of the most important social issues of the twenty-first century. The editors have brought together scholars who collectively represent the world's foremost experts on family systems. The net result is a volume replete with important comparative findings and insights on the changing family and family policies in the United States and other countries."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"This book provides an excellent review of what we do and do not know about changes in marriage and childbearing in the United States. It's readable and it's thorough. The policy implications of these changes are discussed by persons from a variety of political and policy viewpoints. If you want to understand what the current debate on marriage and families is all about, The Future of the Family is the book to read."
-REBECCA M. BLANK, Henry Carter Adams Professor of Policy and dean, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

"This book is a fitting final legacy of Senator Patrick Moynihan, who did so much as a scholar and politician to call attention to the plight of the family in America. Like Senator Moynihan, The Future of the Family is difficult to characterize ideologically, which is its great strength. It presents the facts as we know them clearly and dispassionately. It assesses the effects of family change with clarity and balance, giving in neither to pessimism or to Pollyanna-like optimism. And most remarkably, it presents the policy recommendations of both conservatives and liberals in sensible dialogue. If policymakers and scholars have enough sense to use it in their work, our national dialogue will be greatly enriched."
-MARY JO BANE, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

High rates of divorce, single-parenthood, and nonmarital cohabitation are forcing Americans to reexamine their definition of family. This evolving social reality requires public policy to evolve as well. The Future of the Family brings together the top scholars of family policy—headlined by editors Lee Rainwater, Tim Smeeding, and, in his last published work, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—to take stock of the state of the family in the United States today and address the ways in which public policy affects the family and vice versa.

The volume opens with an assessment of new forms of family, discussing how reduced family income and lower parental involvement can disadvantage children who grow up outside of two-parent households. The book then presents three vastly dissimilar recommendations—each representing a different segment of the political spectrum—for how family policy should adapt to these changes. Child psychologist Wade Horn argues the case of political conservatives that healthy two-parent families are the best way to raise children and therefore should be actively promoted by government initiatives. Conversely, economist Nancy Folbre argues that government’s role lies not in prescribing family arrangements but rather in recognizing and fostering the importance of caregivers within all families, conventional or otherwise. Will Marshall and Isabel Sawhill borrow policy prescriptions from the left and the right, arguing for more initiatives that demand personal responsibility from parents, as well as for an increase in workplace flexibility and the establishment of universal preschool programs. The book follows with commentary by leading policy analysts Samuel Preston, Frank Furstenberg Jr., and Irwin Garfinkel on the merits of the conservative and liberal arguments. Each suggests that marriage promotion alone is not enough to ensure a happy, healthy, and prosperous future for American children who are caught up in the vortex of family change. They agree that government investments in children, however, can promote superior developmental outcomes and even potentially encourage traditional families by enlarging the pool of “marriageable” individuals for the next generation.

No government action can reverse trends in family formation or return America to the historic nuclear family model. But understanding social change is an essential step in fashioning effective policy for today’s families. With authoritative insight, The Future of the Family broadens and updates our knowledge of how public policy and demography shape one another.

DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN was university professor at Syracuse University until his untimely death in March 2003, as well as a former United States senator and ambassador to India and the United Nations.

TIMOTHY M. SMEEDING is the Maxwell Professor of Public Policy at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and overall director of the Luxembourg Income Study.

LEE RAINWATER is professor of sociology emeritus at Harvard University and research director of the Luxembourg Income Study.

CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel P. Moynihan, Lee Rainwater, Timothy M. Smeeding, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, David T. Ellwood, Nancy Folbre, Frank F. Furstenberg, Irwin Garfinkel, Janet C. Gornick, Wade F. Horn, Christopher Jencks, Kathnleen Kiernan, Will Marshall, Sara McLanahan, Samuel H. Preston, Isabel V. Sawhill, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, and Douglas A. Wolf.

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