The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History - Paperback

by Michael B. Katz (Editor)

Do ominous reports of an emerging "underclass" reveal an unprecedented crisis in American society? Or are social commentators simply rediscovering the tragedy of recurring urban poverty, as they seem to do every few decades? Although social scientists and members of the public make frequent assumptions about these questions, they have little information about the crucial differences between past and present. By providing a badly needed historical context, these essays reframe today's "underclass" debate. Realizing that labels of "social pathology" echo fruitless distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the contributors focus not on individual and family behavior but on a complex set of processes that have been at work over a long period, degrading the inner cities and, inevitably, the nation as a whole.

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Realizing that labels of 'social pathology' echo fruitless distinctions between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, the contributors focus not on individual and family behavior but on a complex set of processes that have been at work over a long period, degrading the inner cities and, inevitably, the nation as a whole.

Author Biography

Michael B. Katz is Stanley I. Sheerr Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of ten books on the history of education, social policy, and poverty, including Poverty and Policy in American History (Academic Press), In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (Basic Books), and The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (Pantheon).