"A persuasive message here is that understanding Los Angeles provides important insights into the future of the American metropolis. Charles offers the most compre hensive study yet of racial attitudes, how these attitudes influence housing preferences, and how these preferences shape the racial comprehension of neighborhoods."
-CITY & COMMUNITY

"Won't You Be My Neighbor?, featuring a survey of a large multiracial sample of Los Angeles County residents, is an important contribution to the literatyre on race and ethnic relations. With thoughtful theoretical arguments and a careful analysis of an impressive empirical data set, Camille Zubrinsky Charles has provided one of the most sophisticated studies of how race and class affect the process of residential decisionmaking."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"Nearly four decades after the Fair Housing Act, racial residential segregation persists at high levels in American cities. In Won't You Be My Neighbor? Camille Zubrinsky Charles systematically demolishes the white lies that Americans like to tell themselves as they cling to the myth of a 'race-blind society.' ... Segregation is alive and well in urban America and it is all about race."
-DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

"Won't You Be My Neighbor? is sociology at its best. The book is as theoretically rich as it is analytically rigorous. Charles has given us the most carefully argued and compelling assessment of why race still matters since Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton's American Apartheid. This book is a genuine must read for any one concerned with understanding the future of our increasingly diverse major urban centers."
-LAWRENCE D. BOBO, Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor and director, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and Program in African and African American Studies, Stanford University

Los Angeles is a city of delicate racial and ethnic balance. As evidenced by the 1965 Watts violence, the 1992 Rodney King riots, and this year’s award-winning film Crash, the city’s myriad racial groups coexist uneasily together, often on the brink of confrontation. In fact, Los Angeles is highly segregated, with racial and ethnic groups clustered in homogeneous neighborhoods. These residential groupings have profound effects on the economic well-being and quality of life of residents, dictating which jobs they can access, which social networks they can tap in to, and which schools they attend. In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, sociologist Camille Zubrinsky Charles explores how modern racial attitudes shape and are shaped by the places in which people live.

Using in-depth survey data and information from focus groups with members of L.A.’s largest racial and ethnic groups, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? explores why Los Angeles remains a segregated city. Charles finds that people of all backgrounds prefer both racial integration and a critical mass of same-race neighbors. When asked to reveal their preferred level of racial integration, people of all races show a clear and consistent order of preference, with whites considered the most highly desired neighbors and blacks the least desirable. This is even true among recent immigrants who have little experience with American race relations. Charles finds that these preferences, which are driven primarily by racial prejudice and minority-group fears of white hostility, taken together with financial considerations, strongly affect people’s decisions about where they live. Still, Charles offers reasons for optimism: over time and with increased exposure to other racial and ethnic groups, people show an increased willingness to live with neighbors of other races.

In a racially and ethnically diverse city, segregated neighborhoods can foster distrust, reinforce stereotypes, and agitate inter-group tensions. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? zeroes in on segregated neighborhoods to provide a compelling examination of the way contemporary racial attitudes shape, and are shaped by, the places where we live.

CAMILLE ZUBRINSKY CHARLES is associate professor of sociology and faculty associate director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

"This book, which is based on solid research by an all-star cast of experts, provides important and timely findings about current welfare issues, some of which are remarkable. The bottom line for the editors of this valuable book is that the country is on the right track, but staying the course will be a challenge in the years ahead."
-Richard P. Nathan, The Rockefeller Institute of Government, SUNY

"This is an indispensable, comprehensive study of the problems and prospects of low-skilled workers, especially welfare recipients who have been entering the labor market in vast numbers. Impressive for the breadth of its research and the depth of its analyses, the book will be a major resource for policymakers, administrators, and researchers-anyone seeking to redesign programs and policies for the working poor."
-Judith M. Gueron, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation

"In a field replete with puzzles, this collection of new empirical research confirms some past knowledge and it solves some old mysteries. But it deepens other mysteries and contains some striking new data. Finding Jobs reminds us that the most powerful assistance program for low-skilled workers is a strong economy. It removes any remaining doubt about whether wage subsidies, public service employment, and financial incentives in general can raise employment and earnings of low skill workers-they can."
-Henry J. Aaron, The Brookings Institution

Do plummeting welfare caseloads and rising employment prove that welfare reform policies have succeeded, or is this success due primarily to the job explosion created by today's robust economy? With roughly one to two million people expected to leave welfare in the coming decades, uncertainty about their long-term prospects troubles many social scientists. Finding Jobs offers a thorough examination of the low-skill labor market and its capacity to sustain this rising tide of workers, many of whom are single mothers with limited education. Each chapter examines specific trends in the labor market to ask such questions as: How secure are these low-skill jobs, particularly in the event of a recession? What can these workers expect in terms of wage growth and career advancement opportunities? How will a surge in the workforce affect opportunities for those already employed in low-skill jobs?

Finding Jobs offers both good and bad news about work and welfare reform. Although the research presented in this book demonstrates that it is possible to find jobs for people who have traditionally relied on public assistance, it also offers cautionary evidence that today's strong economy may mask enduring underlying problems. Finding Jobs shows that the low-wage labor market is particularly vulnerable to economic downswings and that lower skilled workers enjoy less job stability. Several chapters illustrate why financial incentives, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), are as essential to encouraging workforce participation as job search programs. Other chapters show the importance of including provisions for health insurance, and of increasing subsidies for child care to assist the large population of working single mothers affected by welfare reform.

Finding Jobs also examines the potential costs of new welfare restrictions. It looks at how states can improve their flexibility in imposing time limits on families receiving welfare, and calls into question the cutbacks in eligibility for immigrants, who traditionally have relied less on public assistance than their native-born counterparts.

Finding Jobs is an informative and wide-ranging inquiry into the issues raised by welfare reform. Based on comprehensive new data, this volume offers valuable guidance to policymakers looking to design policies that will increase work, raise incomes, and lower poverty in changing economic conditions.

REBECCA M. BLANK is dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is also research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

DAVID E. CARD is Class of 1950 Professor of Economics and head of the Center for Labor Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

CONTRIBUTORS: Patricia Anderson, Timothy Bartik, Kristin Butcher, Janet Currie, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, David T. Ellwood, Tricia Gladden, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harry J. Holzer, Hilary Hoynes, Luojia Hu, Robert J. LaLonde, Phillip B. Levine, Susan E. Mayer, Robert A. Moffitt, LaDonna A. Pavetti, Philip K. Robins, Christopher Taber, Jane Waldfogel, Elisabeth D. Welty, Aaron Yelowitz