Over the past three decades, average household wealth in the United States has declined among all but the richest families, with a near 80 percent drop among the nation's poorest families. Although the national debate about inequality has focused on income, it is wealth—the private assets amassed and passed on within families—that provides the extra economic cushion needed to move beyond mere day-to-day survival. Assets for the Poor is the first full-scale investigation into the importance of family wealth and the need for policies to encourage asset-building among the poor.

Assets for the Poor shows how institutional mechanisms designed to encourage acquisition of capital and property favor middle-class and high-income families. For example, the aggregate value of home mortgage tax deductions far outweighs the dollar amount of the subsidies provided by Section 8 rental vouchers and public housing. Banking definitions of creditworthiness largely exclude minorities, and welfare rules have made it nearly impossible for single mothers to accumulate savings, let alone stocks or real estate. Due to persistent residential segregation, even those minority families who do own homes are often denied equal access to better schools and public services.

The research in this volume shows that the poor do make use of the assets they have. Cash gifts—although small in size—are frequent within families and often lead to such positive results as homebuying and debt reduction, while tangible assets such as tools and cars help increase employment prospects. Assets for the Poor examines policies such as Individual Development Account tax subsidies to reward financial savings among the poor, and more liberal credit rules to make borrowing easier and less costly. The contributors also offer thoughtful advice for bringing the poor into mainstream savings institutions and warn against developing asset building policies at the expense of existing safety net programs.

Asset-building for low-income families is a powerful idea that offers hope to families searching for a way out of poverty. Assets for the Poor challenges current thinking regarding poverty reduction policies and proposes a major shift in the way we think about families and how they make a better life.

THOMAS M. SHAPIRO is professor of sociology at Northeastern University.

EDWARD N. WOLFF is professor of economics at New York University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard V. Burkhauser, John Sibley Butler, Stacie Carney, Dalton Conley, Nancy A. Denton, Kathryn Edin, William G. Gale, Robert Haveman, Lelvin L. Oliver, Laurence S. Seidman, Thomas M. Shapiro, Michael Sherraden, Seymour Spilerman, Mark J. Stern, Robert Weathers, Mark O. Wilhelm, Edward N. Wolff

A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building

Classical economic theory assumes that people in risk situations follow a course of action based on a rational, consistent assessment of likely outcomes. But as Zur Shapira demonstrates in Risk Taking, corporate managers consistently stray from the prescribed path into far more subjective territory. Risk Taking offers a critical assessment of the relationship between theory and action in managerial decision making.

Shapira offers a definitive account of the classical conception of risky decision making, which derives behavioral prescriptions from a calculation of both the value and the likelihood of possible outcomes. He then demonstrates how theories in this vein have been historically at odds with empirical observations. Risk Taking reports the results of an extensive survey of seven hundred managers that probed their attitudes and beliefs about risk and examined how they had actually made decisions in the face of uncertainty. The picture that emerges is of a dynamic, flexible process in which each manager’s personal expertise and perceptions play profound roles.

Managerial strategies are continually modified to suit changing circumstances. Rather than formulating probability estimates, executives create potential scenarios based not only on the possible outcomes but also on the many arbitrary factors inherent in their own situations. As Shapira notes, risk taking propensities vary among managers, and the need to maintain control and avoid particularly dangerous results exercises a powerful influence. Shapira also examines the impact of organizational structure, long-term management objectives, and incentives on decision making.

With perceptive observations of the cognitive, emotional, and organizational dimensions of corporate decision making, Risk Taking propels the study of managerial risk behavior into new directions. This volume signals the way toward improving managerial decision making by revealing the need for more inclusive choice models that augment classical theory with vital behavioral observations.

ZUR SHAPIRA is research professor of management and organizational behavior at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

This is the story of a revolution without fanfare, a hidden struggle for party reform that produced a new era in national politics. From this struggle emerged the greatest deliberately planned and centrally imposed change in the mechanics of delegate selection, and hence presidential nomination, in all of American history. The success of this revolution heralded the arrival of new political coalitions that would alter the very character of presidential politics, from campaign organization to grass-roots participation.

The battle for reform raged within the Democratic party from 1968 to 1972, although it would quickly affect the Republican party as well. It was intense, intricate—and nearly invisible. Yet its chronicle is essential background for political practitioners, professional commentators, and interested citizens alike. And it is the basis for understanding the subsequent course of national politics and the current shape of presidential politics.

Quiet Revolution provides the first definitive account of this struggle for reform, an account that is at once modern political history and an illuminating analysis of contemporary American politics. Based on candid interviews with numerous key participants and on extensive archival material, this compelling narrative offers the fascination of political maneuvers closely observed, the drama of momentous events unfolding, and the challenge of a new politics newly interpreted.

BYRON E. SHAFER is resident scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Education specialists have written volumes on the best ways to help children learn to read and write, but who is helping them navigate the potentially treacherous waters of social interactions? While in school to study, children are also preoccupied with understanding the rules governing social relationships. Issues of trust and loyalty, rivalry and conflict, belonging and exclusion affect all school-aged children, but very few lesson plans include social development skills.

The Promotion of Social Awareness summarizes thirty years of research on the social development of children in elementary and middle school, and shows how this work has led to a series of programs that promote the social competence of children and adolescents. Rich with lessons drawn from real life, the book includes an in-depth account of the author's partnership with an innovative program designed to help educators promote a sound ethic of social relationships among children, a case study of a teacher particularly gifted at promoting such relationships, and the tale of how the author's theoretical framework fared cross-culturally when exported to Iceland.

The Promotion of Social Awareness documents Robert Selman's efforts both as a practitioner trying to help young people develop their interpersonal skills and as a researcher attempting to understand the factors that promote or hinder social development. Selman believes that getting along with others involves concrete and measurable social skills and actions that can be taught. The book underlines how the science of social development has given rise to initiatives and programs that can be used in educational settings to help children get along with each other, and may in the long run help prevent violence, drug abuse, and prejudice.

Unique in its marriage of theory and practice, The Promotion of Social Awareness will appeal to a wide readership, including developmental psychologists, educators, and parents.

ROBERT L. SELMAN is Roy E. Larsen Professor of Human Development and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School.

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

As the world economy becomes increasingly integrated, companies can shift production to wherever wages are lowest and unions weakest. How can workers defend their rights in an era of mobile capital? With national governments forced to compete for foreign investment by rolling back legal protections for workers, fair trade advocates are enlisting consumers to put market pressure on companies to treat their workers fairly. In Beyond the Boycott, sociologist Gay Seidman asks whether this non-governmental approach can reverse the “race to the bottom” in global labor standards.

Beyond the Boycott examines three campaigns in which activists successfully used the threat of a consumer boycott to pressure companies to accept voluntary codes of conduct and independent monitoring of  work sites. The voluntary Sullivan Code required American corporations operating in apartheid-era South Africa to improve treatment of their workers;  in India, the Rugmark inspection team provides ‘social labels’ for  handknotted carpets made without child labor; and in Guatemala,  COVERCO monitors conditions in factories producing clothing under contract for major American brands. Seidman compares these cases to explore the ingredients of successful campaigns, as well as the inherent limitations facing voluntary monitoring schemes. Despite activists’ emphasis on educating individual consumers to support ethical companies, Seidman finds that, in practice, they have been most successful when they mobilized institutions—such as universities, churches, and shareholder organizations. Moreover, although activists tend to dismiss states’ capabilities, all three cases involved governmental threats of trade sanctions against companies and countries with poor labor records. Finally, Seidman  points to an intractable difficulty of independent workplace monitoring: since consumers rarely distinguish between monitoring schemes and labels, companies can hand pick monitoring organizations, selecting those with the lowest standards for working conditions and the least aggressive inspections. Transnational consumer movements can increase the bargaining power of the global workforce, Seidman argues, but they cannot replace national governments or local campaigns to expand the meaning of citizenship.

As trade and capital move across borders in growing volume and with greater speed, civil society and human rights movements are also becoming more global. Highly original and thought-provoking, Beyond the Boycott vividly depicts the contemporary movement to humanize globalization—its present and its possible future.

GAY W. SEIDMAN is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The United States spends billions of dollars annually on social and economic policies aimed at improving the lives of its citizens, but the health consequences associated with these policies are rarely considered. In Making Americans Healthier, a group of multidisciplinary experts shows how social and economic policies seemingly unrelated to medical well-being have dramatic consequences for the health of the American people.

Most previous research concerning problems with health and healthcare in the United States has focused narrowly on issues of medical care and insurance coverage, but Making Americans Healthier demonstrates the important health consequences that policymakers overlook in traditional cost-benefit evaluations of social policy. The contributors examine six critical policy areas: civil rights, education, income support, employment, welfare, and neighborhood and housing. Among the important findings in this book, David Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney document the robust relationship between educational attainment and health, and estimate that the health benefits of education may exceed even the well-documented financial returns of education. Pamela Herd, James House, and Robert Schoeni discover notable health benefits associated with the Supplemental Security Income Program, which provides financial support for elderly and disabled Americans. George Kaplan, Nalini Ranjit, and Sarah Burgard document a large and unanticipated improvement in the health of African-American women following the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Making Americans Healthier presents ground-breaking evidence that the health impact of many social policies is substantial. The important findings in this book pave the way for promising new avenues for intervention and convincingly demonstrate that ultimately social and economic policy is health policy.
 

ROBERT F. SCHOENI is professor of public policy and economics, the University of Michigan.

JAMES S. HOUSE is Angus Campbell Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Survey Research, the University of Michigan.

GEORGE A. KAPLAN is the Thomas Francis Collegiate Professor of Public Health, the University of Michigan.

HAROLD POLLACK is associate professor of social service administration, University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: Marianne P. Bitler, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Sarah A. Burgard, Janet Currie, David M. Cutler, Rebecca C. Fauth, Irv Garfinkel. Ben B. Hansen, Pamela Herd, Hilary Hoynes, Daniel Keating, Jean Knab, Adriana Lleras-Muney, Sara McLanahan, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, Enrico Moretti, Theresa L. Osypuk, Richard H. Price,  Nalini Ranjit, Ana V. Diez Roux, Christopher J. Ruhm, Sharon Z. Simonton.

A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

Leon Festinger's forty-year scrutiny of that "curious animal, the modern human being" fundamentally transformed psychological thinking and shaped an entire scientific field, that of social psychology. The twenty-four papers brought together for the first time in Extending Psychological Frontiers encompass the classic contributions and critical turning points of Festinger's long career.

Spanning the post-war decades, this unprecedented volume reveals the full scope, diversity, and import of Festinger's work. Its thematic arrangement clarifies the complex network of problems that preoccupied Festinger and the unique imaginative style that characterized his intellect. Whether examining the voting behavior of Catholics and Jews, the meaning of minute eye movements, the decisions of maze-running rats, or the proselytizing behavior of cultists, Festinger consistently transcended the traditional bounds of the discipline. His theory of cognitive dissonance, which describes how people attempt to resolve the tensions that result when they hold simultaneously two inconsistent beliefs, challenged preexisting psychological theories and produced more important ideas and experimentation than any other development in social psychology. Major writings on group dynamics, decision making, and perceptual processes further underscore the impact of Festinger's research not only on psychology, but also on a wide range of intellectual fronts, from literary theory to ethnology and from historical studies to contemporary political analysis.

Extending Psychological Frontiers is an invaluable resource, providing a comprehensive and coherent picture of an extraordinary body of work.

STANLEY SCHACHTER is Robert Johnson Niven Professor of Social Psychology at Columbia University.

MICHAEL S. GAZZANIGA is Andrew W. Thomson, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry at the Dartmouth Medical School.

This widely acclaimed study of political power in a metropolitan community portrays the political system in its entirety and in balance—and retains much of the drama, the excitement, and the special style of New York City. It discusses the stakes and rules of the city's politics, and the individuals, groups, and official agencies influencing government action.

WALLACE S. SAYRE is Eaton Professor of Public Administration at Columbia University.

HERBERT KAUFMAN is associate professor of political science at Yale University.

The Dutch economy has often been heralded for accomplishing solid employment growth within a generous welfare system. In recent years, the Netherlands has seen a rise in low-wage work and has maintained one of the lowest unemployment rates in the European Union. Low-Wage Work in the Netherlands narrows in on the causes and consequences of this new development. The authors find that the increase in low-wage work can be partly attributed to a steep rise in the number of part-time jobs and non-standard work contracts—46 percent of Dutch workers hold part-time jobs. The decline in full-time work has challenged historically powerful Dutch unions and has led to a slow but steady dismantling of many social insurance programs from 1979 onward. At the same time, there are hopeful lessons to be gleaned from the Dutch model: low-wage workers benefit from a well-developed system of income transfers, and many move on to higher paying jobs. Low-Wage Work in the Netherlands paints a nuanced picture of the Dutch economy by analyzing institutions that both support and challenge its low-wage workforce.

WIEMER SALVERDA is director of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

MAARTEN VAN KLAVEREN is researcher and consultant at STZ Consultancy and Research.

MARC VAN DER MEER is director of studies at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

CONTRIBUTORS: Ria Hermanussen, Robert Solow, Wim Sprenger, Kea Tijdens, Arjen Van Halem. 

A Volume in the RSF Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies

Neighborhood support groups have always played a key role in helping the poor survive, but combating poverty requires more than simply meeting the needs of day-to-day subsistence. Social Capital and Poor Communities shows the significant achievements that can be made through collective strategies, which empower the poor to become active partners in revitalizing their neighborhoods. Trust and cooperation among residents and local organizations such as churches, small businesses, and unions form the basis of social capital, which provides access to resources that would otherwise be out of reach to poor families.

Social Capital and Poor Communities examines civic initiatives that have built affordable housing, fostered small businesses, promoted neighborhood safety, and increased political participation. At the core of each initiative lie local institutions—church congregations, parent-teacher groups, tenant associations, and community improvement alliances. The contributors explore how such groups build networks of leaders and followers and how the social power they cultivate can be successfully transferred from smaller goals to broader political advocacy. For example, community-based groups often become platforms for leaders hoping to run for local office. Church-based groups and interfaith organizations can lobby for affordable housing, job training programs, and school improvement.

Social Capital and Poor Communities convincingly demonstrates why building social capital is so important in enabling the poor to seek greater access to financial resources and public services. As the contributors make clear, this task is neither automatic nor easy. The book's frank discussions of both successes and failures illustrate the pitfalls—conflicts of interest, resistance from power elites, and racial exclusion—that can threaten even the most promising initiatives. The impressive evidence in this volume offers valuable insights into how goal formation, leadership, and cooperation can be effectively cultivated, resulting in a remarkable force for change and a rich public life even for those communities mired in seemingly hopeless poverty.

SUSAN SAEGERT is professor of environmental psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

J. PHILLIP THOMPSON is Associate Professor in American politics, Columbia University.

MARK R. WARREN is associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Mark Chaves,  Cathy J. Cohen,  Cynthia M. Duncan,  Michael Foley,  Ross Gittell,  Sherman A. James,  Langley C. Keyes,  Margaret Levi,  M. Lisette Lopez,  John D. McCarthy, Lorraine C. Minnite,  Pedro A. Noguera,  Melvin L. Oliver,  Robert Putnam,  Robert J. Sampson,  Amy Schulz,  Robert Y. Shapiro,  Carol B. Stack,  Juliana van Olphen.

A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building