"A superb collection that paints a clear, if not especially bright, picture: Inequality is widening in America largely because our democracy isn't working as it should. Read Remaking America and commit yourself to doing something about it."
-ROBERT B. REICH, professor of public policy, University of California at Berkeley

"Remaking America is a remarkable collection featuring original contributions from many leading analysts of U.S. democracy and public policy. Far from the usual arid collection of prescriptions, this book gives us the big picture: how U.S. tax and social programs have been reconfigured over recent decades, and what difference the changes make for governance and participation. We learn that policies are not only the result of ongoing political struggles; they also reshape the capacities of government and the ideas and engagement of citizens and social groups. Unfolding policies and their political effects say much about the nation's capacity to react-or not-to the deleterious effects of rising socioeconomic inequality. Students, scholars, and members of the educated public have much to learn from this insightful volume."
-THEDA SKOCPOL, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Over the past three decades, the contours of American social, economic, and political life have changed dramatically. The post-war patterns of broadly distributed economic growth have given way to stark inequalities of income and wealth, the GOP and its allies have gained power and shifted U.S. politics rightward, and the role of government in the lives of Americans has changed fundamentally. Remaking America explores how these trends are related, investigating the complex interactions of economics, politics, and public policy.

Remaking America explains how the broad restructuring of government policy has both reflected and propelled major shifts in the character of inequality and democracy in the United States. The contributors explore how recent political and policy changes affect not just the social standing of Americans but also the character of democratic citizenship in the United States today. Lawrence Jacobs shows how partisan politics, public opinion, and interest groups have shaped the evolution of Medicare, but also how Medicare itself restructured health politics in America. Kimberly Morgan explains how highly visible tax policies created an opportunity for conservatives to lead a grassroots tax revolt that ultimately eroded of the revenues needed for social-welfare programs. Deborah Stone explores how new policies have redefined participation in the labor force—as opposed to fulfilling family or civic obligations—as the central criterion of citizenship. Frances Fox Piven explains how low-income women remain creative and vital political actors in an era in which welfare programs increasingly subject them to stringent behavioral requirements and monitoring. Joshua Guetzkow and Bruce Western document the rise of mass incarceration in America and illuminate its unhealthy effects on state social-policy efforts and the civic status of African-American men.

For many disadvantaged Americans who used to look to government as a source of opportunity and security, the state has become increasingly paternalistic and punitive. Far from standing alone, their experience reflects a broader set of political victories and policy revolutions that have fundamentally altered American democracy and society. Empirically grounded and theoretically informed, Remaking America connects the dots to provide insight into the remarkable social and political changes of the last three decades.

JOE SOSS is the Cowles Professor for the Study of Public Service at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.

JACOB S. HACKER is professor of political science at Yale University and resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

SUZANNE METTLER is Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Andrea Louise Campbell, Richard B. Freeman, Joshua Guetzkow, Jennifer Hochschild,  Helen Ingram,  Lawrence R. Jacobs,  R. Shep Melnick,  Kimberly J. Morgan,  Frances Fox Pivens,  Paul Pierson,  Joel Rogers,  Sanford F. Schram,  Deborah Stone,  Vasla Weaver,  Bruce Western.  

"Smith's research updates a long line of work that tries to understand the pattern of social supports in communities of concentrated poverty. She expands our understanding of the process by which acute deficits of human capital are converted into enduring disadvantage."
-CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

"Lone Pursuit significantly advances our understanding of the employment woes of poor African Americans, This book provides new insights on the structural, cultural, and psychological factors that contribute to the high rate of joblessness among low-skilled blacks. I highly recommend it."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"Ever since the classic work by Granovetter, we have been aware of the powerful influence of social networks in labor market matching. But the question of what prompts a network tie to take the next step-to activate on behalf of a job seeker-has rarely been investigated. In this rich and engaging volume, Sandra Smith discovers the self-defeating rules of the game among poor African American job seekers who refrain from asking their network partners to help because they expect to be rejected. Hesitation by network partners combines with withdrawal on the part of the unemployed, leading to a devastating stalemate. Smith's work is sobering, insightful, and crucial in helping scholars under stand how the matching process breaks down for thousands of would be workers in the inner city."
-KATHERINE S. NEWMAN, Forbes '41 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"Lone Pursuit is an elegantly written and substantively rich book about the many challenges faced by poor black job seekers. Deftly navigating between structural and cultural accounts of these disadvantages, the story that emerges from Professor Smith's careful fieldwork is a subtle tale of how moral judgments about the importance of work internal to the working class African American community reflect and reinforce the values of mainstream society, and how those judgments structure the job seeking of disad vantaged blacks. This work is required reading for any serious scholar of race and inequality."
-ROBERTO M. FERNANDEZ, William F. Pounds Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

"Lone Pursuit explains the seemingly inexplicable. Building on parallel arguments in Carol Stack's classic All Our Kin-that trust and distrust infuse relations among kin-Sandra Smith extends the interpersonal to the drama of the labor market as people search for jobs and try to find 'somebody' to trust. A deeply complex and original view of social capital that shows how family and friend networks fail to facilitate job search processes in poor black communities."
-MITCHELL DUNEIER, professor of sociology, Princeton University

Unemployment among black Americans is twice that of whites. Myriad theories have been put forward to explain the persistent employment gap between blacks and whites in the U.S. Structural theorists point to factors such as employer discrimination and the decline of urban manufacturing. Other researchers argue that African-American residents living in urban neighborhoods of concentrated poverty lack social networks that can connect them to employers. Still others believe that African-American culture fosters attitudes of defeatism and resistance to work. In Lone Pursuit, sociologist Sandra Susan Smith cuts through this thicket of competing explanations to examine the actual process of job searching in depth. Lone Pursuit reveals that unemployed African Americans living in the inner city are being let down by jobholding peers and government agencies who could help them find work, but choose not to.

Lone Pursuit is a pioneering ethnographic study of the experiences of low-skilled, black urban residents in Michigan as both jobseekers and jobholders. Smith surveyed 105 African-American men and women between the ages of 20 and 40, each of whom had no more than a high school diploma. She finds that mutual distrust thwarts cooperation between jobseekers and jobholders. Jobseekers do not lack social capital per se, but are often unable to make use of the network ties they have. Most jobholders express reluctance about referring their friends and relatives for jobs, fearful of jeopardizing their own reputations with employers. Rather than finding a culture of dependency, Smith discovered that her underprivileged subjects engage in a discourse of individualism. To justify denying assistance to their friends and relatives, jobholders characterize their unemployed peers as lacking in motivation and stress the importance of individual responsibility. As a result, many jobseekers, wary of being demeaned for their needy condition, hesitate to seek referrals from their peers. In a low-skill labor market where employers rely heavily on personal referrals, this go-it-alone approach is profoundly self-defeating. In her observations of a state job center, Smith finds similar distrust and non-cooperation between jobseekers and center staff members, who assume that young black men are unwilling to make an effort to find work. As private contractors hired by the state, the job center also seeks to meet performance quotas by screening out the riskiest prospects—black male and female jobseekers who face the biggest obstacles to employment and thus need the most help.

The problem of chronic black joblessness has resisted both the concerted efforts of policymakers and the proliferation of theories offered by researchers. By examining the roots of the African-American unemployment crisis from the vantage point of the everyday job-searching experiences of the urban poor, Lone Pursuit provides a novel answer to this decades-old puzzle.

SANDRA SUSAN SMITH is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

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

"This volume is distinguished by immense scholarship in economics and political science extending beyond the Social Security issue to the proper role of government in the economy. An important addition to the literature."
-CHOICE

"Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg clear the air on the Social Security debate. They set their sociological sights on the econometric battle over rescue strategies versus privatization, showing that arguments about efficiency are invariably colored by politics. In reviewing arguments and evidence for each side, they call for an open debate in which politicians and policy wonks put all their cards on the table. This lucid and even-handed book offers the non-expert an introduction to the issues that is engaging, yet never dumbed down. It challenges the expert to overcome partisan politics."
-FRANK DOBBIN, professor of sociology, Harvard University

"Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg bring an insightful and nuanced sociological perspective to the history and recent controversies surrounding Social Security and proposed changes in the system with an impressively broad (and deep) intellectual orientation that transcends sociology to include economics, history, philosophy, political science, and literature. They evaluate the 'toxic' political-economic climate surrounding Social Security in a clear-eyed fashion by distinguishing 'technical' from 'political' arguments. And, they make courageous public judgments about the political motives, voracity, and behaviors of public figures embroiled in these policy debates."
-ANGELA M. O'RAND, professor of sociology, Duke University

The rancorous debate over the future of Social Security reached a fever pitch in 2005 when President Bush unsuccessfully proposed a plan for private retirement accounts. Although efforts to reform Social Security seem to have reached an impasse, the long-term problem—the projected Social Security deficit—remains. In Pension Puzzles, sociologists Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg explain for a general audience the fiscal challenges facing Social Security and explore the larger political context of the Social Security debate.

Pension Puzzles cuts through the sloganeering of politicians in both parties, presenting Social Security’s technical problems evenhandedly and showing how the Social Security debate is one piece of a larger political struggle. Hardy and Hazelrigg strip away the ideological baggage to explicate the basic terms and concepts needed to understand the predicament of Social Security. They compare the cases for privatizing Social Security and for preserving the program in its current form with adjustments to taxes and benefits, and they examine the different economic projections assumed by proponents of each approach. In pursuit of its privatization agenda, Hardy and Hazelrigg argue, the Bush administration has misled the public on an issue that was already widely misunderstood. The authors show how privatization proponents have relied on dubious assumptions about future rates of return to stock market investments and about the average citizen’s ability to make informed investment decisions. In addition, the administration has painted the real but manageable shortfalls in Social Security revenue as a fiscal crisis. Projections of Social Security revenues and benefits by the Social Security Administration have treated revenues as fixed, when in fact they are determined by choices made by Congress. Ultimately, as Hardy and Hazelrigg point out, the clash over Social Security is about more than technical fiscal issues: it is part of the larger culture wars and the ideological struggle over what kind of social responsibilities and rights American citizens should have. This rancorous partisan wrangling, the alarmist talk about a “crisis” in Social Security, and the outright deception employed in this debate have all undermined the trust between citizens and government that is needed to restore the solvency of Social Security for future generations of retirees.

Drawing together economic analyses, public opinion data, and historical narratives, Pension Puzzles is a lucid and engaging guide to the major proposals for Social Security reform. It is also an insightful exploration of what that debate reveals about American political culture in the twenty-first century.

MELISSA HARDY is Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies in Sociology and Demography and director of the Gerontology Center at the Pennsylvania State University.

LAWRENCE HAZELRIGG is professor emeritus at Florida State University and adjunct professor of sociology at the Pennsylvania State University.

Winner of the Society for Research on Adolesence Social Policy Award for Best Authored Book, 2006-2008

"In his latest book, Furstenberg offers a valuable geneaology of American teen pregnancy, public policy, and America's unique moral politics that shaped the public debate. His book should be read in poverty and policy courses ... [and] by every scholar who aspires to conduct useful research, not only to reinforce the reasons for doing policy-relevant research but also to learn how to present it with honesty and humility."
-CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

"With this important and timely book a preeminent scholar of urban families seriously chal lenges conventional wisdom on the problems and consequences of teenage childbearing. Frank Furstenberg's empirically based and innovative arguments are provocative and compelling. Destinies of the Disadvantaged will be discussed and debated by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners for many years."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"This masterful book on a remarkable thirty-year study will change the way people think about teenage pregnancy and childbearing."
-ANDREW CHERLIN, Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and director, Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University

"In his new book, Frank Furstenberg provides us with a masterful account of the causes, conse quences, and politics of teenage childbearing. Destinies of the Disadvantaged is essential reading for anyone who cares about the role of family formation in the reproduction of poverty."
-SARA S. MCLANAHAN, professor of sociology and public affairs, Princeton University

Teen childbearing has risen to frighteningly high levels over the last four decades, jeopardizing the life chances of young parents and their offspring alike, particularly among minority communities. Or at least, that’s what politicians on the right and left often tell us, and what the American public largely believes. But sociologist Frank Furstenberg argues that the conventional wisdom distorts reality. In Destinies of the Disadvantaged, Furstenberg traces the history of public concern over teen pregnancy, exploring why this topic has become so politically powerful, and so misunderstood.

Based on over forty years of Furstenberg’s research on teen childbearing, Destinies of the Disadvantaged relates how the issue emerged from obscurity to become one of the most heated social controversies in America. Both slipshod research by social scientists and opportunistic grandstanding by politicians have contributed to public misunderstanding of the issue. Although out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy rose notably between 1960 and 1990—a cause for concern given the burdens of single motherhood at a young age—this trend did not reflect a rise in the rate of overall teen pregnancies. In fact, teen pregnancy actually declined dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of unmarried teenage mothers rose after 1960, not because more young women became pregnant, but because those who did increasingly chose not to rush into marriage. Furstenberg shows how early social science research on this topic exaggerated the adverse consequences of early parenthood both for young parents and for their children. Researchers also inaccurately portrayed single teenage motherhood as a phenomenon concentrated among minorities. Both of these misapprehensions skewed subsequent political debates. The issue became a public obsession and remained so during the 1990s, even as rates of out-of-wedlock teen childbearing plummeted. Addressing teen pregnancy was originally a liberal cause, led by advocates of family planning services, legalized abortion, and social welfare programs for single mothers. The issue was later adopted by conservatives, who argued that those liberal remedies were encouraging teen parenthood. According to Furstenberg, the flexible political usefulness of the issue explains its hold on political discourse.

The politics of teen parenthood is a fascinating case study in the abuse of social science for political ends. In Destinies of the Disadvantaged, Furstenberg brings that tale to life with the perspective of a historian and the insight of an insider, and provides the straight facts needed to craft effective policies to address teen pregnancy.

FRANK F. FURSTENBERG is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology and a research associate in the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and chair of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood.
 

"Unmarried Couples with Children provides a very valuable portrait of the cohabiting couples, little noticed by most Americans, who are the parents of one out of six American babies born today."
-ANDREW CHERLIN, Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and director, Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University

"Too many children face the multiple disadvantages of being born to unmarried parents. Unmarried Couples with Children provides the most detailed information yet available about how these fragile families are formed, how they function, why they breakup, and what happens after the breakup. The volume is indispensable for anyone hoping to understand these families and how to help them."
-RON HASKINS, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

"This stellar volume marries ethnograpy with demography, getting inside the lives of fragile families as they negotiate their fierce commitments to their children. Each of the chapters explores a different aspect of data collected in a unique qualitative add-on to a large-scale longitudinal study of low-income parents. The innovative research methodology and fascinating findings in Unmarried Couples with Children vindicate a new style of social scientific research."
-NANCY FOLBRE, professor of economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"[Unmarried Couples with Children] is a thorough, methodologically sophisticated piece of research that examines family planning, economic issues, reasons for couple breakup, parenting behavior post-breakup, and the formation of new families among low-income families in cases where the biological parents were not married at the time of the child's birth. This collection is definitely one of if not the most exhaustive and indispensable resources for anyone interested in understanding the issues, dynamics, and experiences surrounding unmarried couples with children, and in providing resources for families such as these."
-CHOICE magazine

Today, a third of American children are born outside of marriage, up from one child in twenty in the 1950s, and rates are even higher among low-income Americans. Many herald this trend as one of the most troubling of our time. But the decline in marriage does not necessarily signal the demise of the two parent family—over 80 percent of unmarried couples are still romantically involved when their child is born and nearly half are living together. Most claim they plan to marry eventually. Yet half have broken up by their child's third birthday. What keeps some couples together and what tears others apart? After a breakup, how do fathers so often disappear from their children's lives?

An intimate portrait of the challenges of partnering and parenting in these families, Unmarried Couples with Children presents a variety of unique findings. Most of the pregnancies were not explicitly planned, but some couples feel having a child is the natural course of a serious relationship. Many of the parents are living with their child plus the mother’s child from a previous relationship. When the father also has children from a previous relationship, his visits to see them at their mother’s house often cause his current partner to be jealous. Breakups are more often driven by sexual infidelity or conflict than economic problems. After couples break up, many fathers complain they are shut out, especially when the mother has a new partner. For their part, mothers claim to limit dads’ access to their children because of their involvement with crime, drugs, or other dangers. For couples living together with their child several years after the birth, marriage remains an aspiration, but something couples are resolutely unwilling to enter without the financial stability they see as a sine qua non of marriage. They also hold marriage to a high relational standard, and not enough emotional attention from their partners is women’s number one complaint.

Unmarried Couples with Children is a landmark study of the family lives of nearly fifty American children born outside of a marital union at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Based on personal narratives gathered from both mothers and fathers over the first four years of their children’s lives, and told partly in the couples' own words, the story begins before the child is conceived, takes the reader through the tumultuous months of pregnancy to the moment of birth, and on through the child's fourth birthday. It captures in rich detail the complex relationship dynamics and powerful social forces that derail the plans of so many unmarried parents. The volume injects some much-needed reality into the national discussion about family values, and reveals that the issues are more complex than our political discourse suggests.

PAULA ENGLAND is professor of sociology at Stanford University.

KATHRYN EDIN is professor of public policy and management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Amy Claessens,  Mimi Engel,  Christina M. Gibson-Davis,  Heather D. Hill,  Kathryn D. Linnenberg,  Katherine A. Magnuson,  Lindsay M. Monte,  Joanna Reed,  Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer.