Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for ChangeSheldon Danziger, Gary D. Sandefur, Daniel H. Weinberg Why is there so much poverty in America in the 1990s? What can be done to reduce it? In this book the leading experts review three decades of research on the nature, causes, and consequences of poverty, and prescribe an antipoverty agenda for the next decade. The authors document trends in poverty and income inequality, review government programs and policies, and analyze the public's complicated attitudes concerning these policies. They discuss the persistence and inter-generational transmission of poverty, the extent of welfare dependence, and the emergence of an urban underclass. Confronting Poverty proposes thoughtful reforms in employment and training, child support, health care, education, welfare, immigration, and urban policies, all crafted from the successes, as well as the failures, of policies over the past three decades. Although antipoverty efforts have been frustrated by slow economic growth, rising inequality, and changes in family structure, the authors offer insightful proposals that will help us resolve the American paradox of "poverty amidst plenty." |
Contents
Trends in Family Income Inequality | 18 |
Historical Trends and Economic Limits | 51 |
The Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty | 85 |
Concept Controversy and Evidence | 109 |
Poverty in Relation to Macroeconomic Trends Cycles and Policies | 147 |
Public Policies to Increase Work | 168 |
SingleMother Families Economic Insecurity and Government | 205 |
Updating Urban Policy | 226 |
The School | 308 |
Poverty and Immigration in Policy Perspective | 330 |
Antipoverty Policy Affirmative Action and Racial Attitudes | 365 |
Poverty Politics | 396 |
Accomplishments | 438 |
Notes | 451 |
| 479 | |
Contributors | 519 |
Reform of Health Care for the Nonelderly Poor | 253 |
Education and the WellBeing of the Next Generation | 289 |