American Social Policy and the Ghetto Underclass

...64 • DISSENT...

...By contrast, the evidence for the influence of joblessness on family structure is much more conclusive...

...In the 1940s, 1950s, and even the 1960s, lower-class, working-class, and middle-class black urban families all resided more or less in the same ghetto areas, albeit on different streets...

...Thus they find it hard to explain why the economic position of the black This essay was excerpted and abridged from William Julius Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy...

...If strong norms and sanctions against aberrant behavior, a sense of community, and positive neighborhood identification are the essential features of social organization in urban areas, inner-city neighborhoods today suffer from a severe lack of social organization...

...Nonetheless, in the last several years, in the face of the overwhelming attention given to welfare as the major source of black-family breakup, concerns about the importance of joblessness have diminished, despite the existence of evidence strongly suggesting the need for renewed scholarly and public-policy attention to the relationship between the disintegration of poor black families and black male labor market experiences...

...These areas have undergone a major social transformation in the last several years as reflected not only in their increasing rates of social dislocation but also in the changing class structure of ghetto neighborhoods...

...3 Richard Nathan, "The Underclass—Will It Always Be With Us...

...Not only are there more blacks without jobs every year...

...And it is important to recognize the racial differences in rates of social dislocation so as not to obscure problems currently gripping the ghetto underclass...

...However, in the foreseeable future 60 • DISSENT employment alone will not necessarily lift a family out of poverty...

...Thus, if policies of preferential treatment for such positions are developed in terms of racial group membership rather than the real disadvantages suffered by individuals, then these policies will further improve the opportunities of the advantaged without necessarily addressing the problems of the truly disadvantaged such as the ghetto underclass.' The problems of the truly disadvantaged may require nonracial solutions such as full employment, balanced economic growth, and manpower training and education (tied to—not isolated from—these two economic conditions...

...There is little reason, therefore, to assume a connection between the recent growth of female-headed white families and patterns of white male employment...

...Moreover, as also discussed above, both racespecific and targeted programs based on the principle of equality of life chances (often identified with a minority constituency) have difficulty sustaining widespread public support...

...men, especially young males, are dropping out of the labor force in record proportions...

...It is therefore reasonable to hypothesize that the rise in rates of separation and divorce among whites is due mainly to the increased economic independence of white women and related social and cultural factors embodied in the feminist movement...

...For all these reasons, a comprehensive program of economic and social reform (highlighting macroeconomic policies to promote balanced economic growth and create a tight labor-market situation, a nationally oriented labor-market strategy, a child support assurance program, a child care strategy, and a family allowance program) would have to include targeted programs, both means-tested and race-specific...

...Finally, the question of child care has to be addressed in any program designed to improve the employment prospects of women and men...

...For example, the higher the median age of a group, the higher its income...

...Their situation, already more difficult than that of any other major ethnic group in the country, continues to worsen...

...Stimulated by the acrimonious debate over the Moynihan report, Gutman produced data demonstrating that the black family was not significantly disrupted during slavery or even during the early years of the first migration to the urban North, beginning after the turn of the century...

...No amount of remedial education, training, wage subsidy, or other embellishment will make them more attractive to prospective employers than experienced unemployed workers...

...For example, a program of adult education and training may be necessary for some ghetto underclass males before they can either become oriented to or move into an expanded labor market...

...the lower the median age, the higher the unemployment rate and the higher the crime rate (more than half of those arrested in 1980 for violent and property crimes in American cities were under twenty-one...

...I emphasize that although this program also would include targeted strategies —both meanstested and race-specific—they would be considered secondary to the universal programs so that the latter are seen as the most visible and dominant aspects in the eyes of the general public...

...Before such programs can be seriously considered, however, the question of cost has to be addressed...

...Many families would still require income support and/or social service such as child care...

...it provides a convenient "political rationale and support for increased funding for education and training programs...

...Furthermore, the problem of annual budget deficits of almost $200 billion dollars (driven mainly by the peacetime military buildup and the Reagan administration's tax cuts), and the need for restoring the federal tax base and adopting a more balanced set of budget priorities have to be tackled if we are to achieve significant progress on expanding opportunities.' In the final analysis, the pursuit of economic and social reform ultimately involves the question of political strategy...

...It is true that problems of joblessness and related woes such as poverty, teenage pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, female-headed families, and welfare dependency are, for reasons of historic racial oppression, disproportionately concentrated in the black community...

...Finally, as long as some poor families are unable to work because of physical or other disabilities, public assistance would be needed even if the government adopted a program of welfare reform that included child support enforcement and family allowance provisions...

...However, the latter would be considered an offshoot of and indeed secondary to the universal programs...

...More specifically, whereas workfare in the 1970s was narrowly construed as "working off" one's welfare grant, the newstyle workfare "takes the form of obligational state programs that involve an array of employment and training services and activities —job search, job training, education programs, and also community work experience...

...These approaches represent the "new-style workfare...

...Nevertheless, since 1970, government policy has tended to focus on formal programs designed and created both to prevent discrimination and to ensure that minorities are sufficiently represented in certain positions...

...And, contrary to popular opinion, there is little evidence to support the argument that welfare is the primary cause of family out-of-wedlock births, break-ups, and female-headed households...

...A Comprehensive Program The problems of the ghetto underclass can be most meaningfully addressed by a comprehensive program that combines employment policies with social welfare policies and that features universal as opposed to race- or group-specific strategies...

...On the other hand, the competitive resources developed by the advantaged minority members —resources that flow directly from the family stability, schooling, income, and peer groups that their parents have been able to provide—result in their benefiting disproportionately from policies that promote the rights of minority individuals by removing artificial barriers to valued positions...

...To the extent that the universal programs draw support from a wider population, the less visible targeted programs would be indirectly supported and protected...

...On the basis of these trends, it would be expected that the growth in numbers of black female-headed households would occur most rapidly in the northern regions followed by the South and the West...

...Paper presented at a symposium on the underclass, New School for Social Research, New York, N.Y., November 14, 1986...

...Moreover, the shrinkage of the male marriageable pool for ages sixteen to twenty-four in the South from 1960 to 1980 is related to the mechanization of agriculture, which lowered substantially the demand for low-skilled agricultural labor, especially during the 1960s...

...Most unemployed blacks in the United States reside within the central cities...

...In short, part of what had gone awry in the ghetto was due to the sheer increase in the number of black youths...

...A game of musical underclass will ensue as one group is temporarily helped, while another is pushed down into the underclass...

...For all these reasons, it is often necessary to go beyond the specific issue of current racial discrimination to understand factors that contribute directly to poor black joblessness and indirectly to related social problems such as family instability in the inner city...

...4 Ibid...

...However, at this point, a program of economic reform is not one of the items currently under serious discussion in the national political arena...

...The Limits of Race-Specific Public Policy In the early 1960s there was no comprehensive civil rights bill and Jim Crow segregation was still widespread in parts of the nation, particularly in the deep South...

...6 Reischauer, "Policy Responses to the Underclass," paper prepared for a symposium at the New School for Social Research, November 14, 1986...

...As Levitan and Johnson have pointed out, "the most recent recession cost the nation an estimated $300 billion in lost income and production, and direct outlays for unemployment compensation totaled $30 billion in a single year...

...The argument that the decline in the incidence of intact marriages among blacks is associated with the declining economic status of black men is further supported by an analysis of regional data on female headship and the "male marriageable pool...

...4 The combining of liberal and conservative approaches does not, of course, change the fact that the new-style workfare programs hardly represent a fundamental shift from the traditional approaches to poverty in America...

...As the history of social provision so clearly demonstrates, universalistic political alliances, cemented by policies that provide benefits directly to wide segments of the population, are needed to work successfully for major reform...

...On the one hand, liberals can relate to new-style workfare because it creates short-term, entry-level positions very similar to the "CETA public service jobs we thought we had abolished in 1981...

...As for the poor black family, it apparently began to fall apart not before but after the mid-twentieth century...

...A national AFDC benefit standard adjusted yearly for inflation is the most minimal required change...

...The important goal is to construct an economic-social reform program in such a way that the universal programs are seen as the dominant and most visible aspects by the general public...

...Age correlates with many things...

...White women are not experiencing this problem...

...The problems of the modern black family, he implied, were associated with modern forces...

...The basic thesis is not that ghetto culture went unchecked following the removal of the higher-income family in the inner city, but that the removal of these families made it more difficult to sustain the 58 • DISSENT basic institutions in the inner city (including churches, stores, schools, recreational facilities, etc...

...In this connection, black women are more likely to delay marriage and less likely to remarry...

...And no workfare program, even Governor Reagan's 1971 program, really got off the ground...

...As the universal programs draw support from a wider population, the targeted programs included in the comprehensive reform package would be indirectly supported and protected...

...The combination of economic and social welfare policies discussed in the previous section represents, from my point of view, such a program...

...Once again the focus is exclusively on individual characteristics—whether they are construed in terms of lack of training, of skills, or of education...

...and it targets these programs at the most disadvantaged, thereby 62 • DISSENT correcting the problem of "creaming" that is associated with other employment and training programs...

...Programs based solely on this principle are inadequate, however, to deal with the complex problems of race in America because they are not designed to address the substantive inequality that exists at the time discrimination is eliminated...

...and a national labor-market strategy to make the labor force more adaptable to changing economic opportunities...

...fiscal and monetary policy not only to stimulate noninflationary growth, but also to increase the competitiveness of American goods on both the domestic and international markets...

...Although black middle-class professionals today tend to be employed in mainstream occupations outside the black community and neither live nor frequently interact with ghetto residents, the black middleclass professionals of the 1940s and 1950s (doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, etc...

...Welfare does seem to have a modest effect on separation and divorce, particularly for white women, but recent evidence indicates that its total effect on the proportion of all female householders is small...

...In the two northern regions, the shift in economic activity from goods production to services has been associated with changes in the location of production, including an interregional movement of industry from the North to the South and West and, more important, a movement of certain industries out of the older central cities where blacks are concentrated...

...This idea was generally rejected by liberals and those in the welfare establishment...

...However, by 1981 President Ronald Reagan was able to get congressional approval to include a provision in the 1981 budget allowing states to experiment with new employment approaches to welfare reform...

...Moreover, as long as certain groups lack the training, skills, and WINTER • 1988 • 61 education to compete effectively on the job market or move into newly created jobs, manpower training and education programs targeted at these groups will also be needed, even under a tight labor-market situation...

...resided in the higher-income areas of the inner city, and serviced the ghetto community...

...The population explosion among minority youths occurred at a time when changes in the economy were beginning to pose serious problems for unskilled workers...

...2 Irwin Garfinkel and Sara S. McLanahan, Single Mothers and Their Children: A New American Dilemma (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1986...

...This has resulted in a shift from the simple formal investigation and adjudication of complaints of racial discrimination to governmentmandated affirmative action programs to increase minority representation in public programs, employment, and education...

...On the other hand, it highlights a child support assurance program, a family allowance program, and a child care strategy...

...The latter refers to the presence of a sufficient number of workingand middle-class professional families to absorb the shock or cushion the effect of uneven economic growth and periodic recessions on inner-city neighborhoods...

...In underlining joblessness as an important aspect of inner-city social transformations, we are reminded that in the 1960s scholars readily attributed poor-black-family deterioration to problems of employment...

...Research has demonstrated, for example, a connection between an encouraging economic situation and the early marriage of young people...

...2 This program, parts of which are currently in operation as a demonstration project in the state of Wisconsin, provides a guaranteed minimum benefit per child to single-parent families regardless of the income of the custodial parent...

...6 If new-style workfare will indeed represent a major policy thrust in the immediate future, I see little prospect for substantially alleviating inequality among poor minorities if it is not part of a more comprehensive program of economic and social reform that recognizes the dynamic interplay between societal organization and the behavior and life chances of individuals and groups—a program, in other words, that is designed both to enhance human capital traits of poor minorities and to open up the opportunity structure in the broader society and economy to facilitate social mobility...

...Those who cite discrimination as the root cause of poverty often fail to make a distinction between the effects of historic discrimination (i.e., discrimination prior to the mid-twentieth century) and the effects of contemporary discrimination...

...Since all absent parents regardless of income are required to participate in this program, it is far less stigmatizing than, say, public assistance...

...The exodus of black middle-class professionals from the inner city has been increasingly accompanied by a movement of stable workingclass blacks to higher-income neighborhoods in other parts of the city and to the suburbs...

...Although black and white teenagers expect to become parents at about the same ages, black teenagers expect to marry at later ages...

...3 According to Richard Nathan, "We make our greatest progress on social reform in the United States when liberals and conservatives find common ground...

...or whether they are seen in terms of lack of motivation or other subjective traits...

...On the one hand, this program highlights macroeconomic policy to generate a tight labor market and economic growth...

...Neither the Child Support Assurance Program under demonstration in Wisconsin nor the European family allowances program is meanstested...

...But is discrimination really greater today than it was in 1948, when black unemployment was less than half of what it is now, and when the gap between black and white jobless rates was narrower...

...On the contrary, as long as a racial division of labor exists and racial minorities are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying positions, antidiscrimination and affirmative action programs will be needed even though they tend to benefit the more advantaged minority members...

...Indeed, black women, especially young black women, are confronting a shrinking pool of "marriageable" (that is, economically stable) men...

...It would be shortsighted to conclude, therefore, that universal programs (i.e., programs not targeted at any particular group) are not designed to help address in a fundamental way some of the problems of the truly disadvantaged such as the ghetto underclass...

...The state collects from the absent parent through wage withholding a sum of money at a fixed rate and then makes regular payments to the custodial parent...

...Perhaps Robert D. Reischauer put it best when he stated: As long as the unemployment rate remains high in many regions of the country, members of the underclass are going to have a very difficult time competing successfully for the jobs that are available...

...Work and Welfare in the United States," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., August 17, 1985...

...The cost of programs to expand social and economic opportunity will be great, but it must be weighed against the economic and social costs of a do-nothing policy...

...In short, their very presence enhanced the social organization of ghetto communities...

...I am reminded of Bayard Rustin's plea during the early 1960s that blacks ought to recognize the importance of fundamental economic reform (including a system of national economic planning along with new education, manpower, and public works programs to help reach full employment) and the need for a broad-based political coalition to achieve it...

...5 As Reischauer also appropriately emphasizes, with a weak economy "even if the workfare program seems to be placing its clients successfully, these participants may simply be taking jobs away from others who are nearly as disadvantaged...

...This is because advantaged minority members are likely to be disproportionately represented among those of their racial group most qualified for valued positions, such as college admissions, higher paying jobs, and promotions...

...5 Robert D. Reischauer, "America's Underclass: Four Unanswered Questions," paper presented at the City Club, Portland, Oregon, January 30, 1987...

...Although new-style workfare is better than having no strategy at all to enhance employment experiences, it should be emphasized that the effectiveness of such programs ultimately depends upon the availability of jobs in a given area...

...8 The recognition among minority leaders and liberal policymakers of the need to expand the War on Poverty and race relations visions to confront the growing problems of inner-city social dislocations will provide, I believe, an important first step toward creating such an alliance...

...New-style workfare embodies both the caring commitment of liberals and the themes identified with conservative writers like Charles Murray, George Gilder, and Lawrence Mead...

...Regional data on the "male marriageable pool index" support this conclusion, except for the larger than expected increase in black female-headed WINTER • 1988 59 families in the West—a function of patterns of selective black migration to the West...

...Accordingly, the hidden agenda for liberal policymakers is to improve the life chances of truly disadvantaged groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs to which the more advantaged groups of all races and class backgrounds can positively relate...

...And since an effective coalition will in part depend upon how the issues are defined, it is imperative that the political message underline the need for economic and social reforms that benefit all groups in the United States, not just poor minorities...

...See his Justice, Equal Opportunity and the Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983...

...The point to be emphasized is that historic discrimination is more important than contemporary discrimination in understanding the plight of the ghetto underclass—that, in any event, there is more to the story than discrimination (of whichever kind...

...In A Piece of the Pie: Black and White Immigrants Since 1880, Stanley Lieberson shows how, in many areas of life, including the labor market, black newcomers from the rural South were far more severely discriminated against in northern cities than were the new white immigrants from southern, central, and eastern Europe...

...By emphasizing universal programs as an effective way to address problems in the inner city created by historic racial subjugation, I am recommending a fundamental shift from the traditional race-specific approach of addressing such problems...

...7 Sar A. Levitan and Clifford M. Johnson, Beyond the Safety Net: Reviving the Promising Opportunity in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1984), pp...

...And once again the consequences of certain economic arrangements on disadvantaged populations in the United States are not considered in the formulation and implementation of social policy...

...And as the basic institutions declined, the social organization of inner-city neighborhoods (defined here to include a sense of community, positive neighborhood identification, and explicit norms and sanctions against aberrant behavior) likewise declined...

...But this point has not been readily grasped by policymakers and civil rights leaders...

...Whereas changes in the ratios of employed men to women among whites have been minimal for all regions of the country regardless of age from 1960 to 1980, the ratios among blacks have declined significantly in all regions except the West, with the greatest declines in the northeast and north-central regions of the country...

...It would be ideal if problems of the ghetto underclass could be adequately addressed by the combination of macroeconomic policy, labor market strategies, and manpower training programs...

...169-170...

...Does this mean that targeted programs of any kind would be necessarily excluded from a package highlighting universal programs of reform...

...Published here by permission of the University of Chicago Press, © 1987 by the University of Chicago...

...We might also give serious consideration to programs such as the Child Support Assurance Program developed by Irwin Garfinkel and colleagues at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison...

...in the face of prolonged joblessness...

...8 Theda Skocpol, "Brother Can You Spare a Job...

...Indeed, discussions of reform seem to be limited to debates over the need for workfare programs for welfare recipients...

...Our "male marriageable pool index" shows that the number of employed white men per 100 white women in different age categories has either remained roughly the same or has only slightly increased in the last two decades...

...Also, more and more black youths, including many who are no longer in school, are obtaining no job experience at all...

...However, the growing problem of joblessness in the inner city exacerbates and is in turn partly created by the changing social composition of inner-city neighborhoods...

...If the truly disadvantaged reaped disproportionate benefits from a child support enforcement, child allowance program, and child care strategy, they would also benefit disproportionately from a program of balanced economic growth and tight labor-market policies because of their greater vulnerability to swings in the business cycle and changes in economic organization, including the relocation of plants and the use of labor-saving technology...

...Urban minorities have been particularly vulnerable to the structural economic changes of the past two decades: the shift from goods-producing to service-producing industries, the increasing polarization of the labor market into low-wage and high-wage sectors, innovations in technology, and the relocation of manufacturing industries out of the central cities...

...The sharp decline in the black "male marriageable pool" in the northeast and north-central regions is related to recent changes in the basic economic organization of American society...

...That the pool of "marriageable" white men has not decreased over the years is perhaps reflected in the earlier age of first marriage and the higher rate of remarriage among white women...

...With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill there was considerable optimism that racial progress would ensue and that the principle of equality of individual rights (namely, that candidates for positions stratified in terms of prestige, power, or other social criteria ought to be judged solely on individual merit and therefore should not be discriminated against on the basis of racial origin) would be upheld...

...All rights reserved...

...James Fishkin covers much of this ground very convincingly...

...Historic discrimination certainly helped to create an impoverished urban black community in the first place...

...Racial discrimination is the most frequently invoked explanation, and it is undeniable that discrimination continues to aggravate the social and economic problems of poor blacks...

...If the absent parent is jobless or if his or her payment from withholdings is less than the minimum, the state makes up the difference...

...A program of welfare reform is needed, therefore, to address the current problems of public assistance, including lack of provisions for poor twoparent families, inadequate levels of support, inequities between different states, and work disincentives...

...A policy that ignores the losses associated with slack labor markets and forced idleness inevitably will underinvest in the nation's labor force and future economic growth...

...On the other hand, conservatives can relate to new-style workfare because "it involves a strong commitment to reducing welfare dependency on the premise that dependency is bad for people, that it undermines their motivation to self-support and isolates and stigmatizes welfare recipients in a way that over a long period feeds into and accentuates the underclass mindset and condition...

...In addition to the problem of historic discrimination, the black migration to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other northern cities—the continued replenishment of black populations there by poor newcomers— predictably skewed the age profile of the urban black community and kept it relatively young...

...that is, they are not targeted at a particular income group and therefore do not suffer the degree of stigmatization that plagues public assistance programs such as AFDC...

...The significance of changes embodied in the social transformation of the inner city is perhaps best captured by the concepts "concentration effects" and "social buffer...

...However, if minority members from the most advantaged families profit disproportionately from policies based on the principle of equality of individual opportunity, they also reap disproportionate benefits from policies of affirmative action based solely on their group membership...

...underclass started to worsen soon after Congress enacted, and the White House began to enforce, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction...

...Although changing social and cultural trends have often been said to explain some of the dynamic shifts in the structure of the family, they appear to have more relevance for changes in family structure among whites...

...The black delay in marriage and the lower rate of remarriage, each associated with high percentages of out-of-wedlock births and female-headed households, can be directly tied to the employment status of black males...

...The hidden agenda for liberal policymakers is to WINTER • 1988 • 63 enhance the chances in life for the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs to which the more advantaged groups of all class and racial backgrounds can positively relate...

...In the 1970s the term "workfare" was narrowly used to capture the idea that welfare recipients should be required to work, even make-work if necessary, in exchange for receiving benefits...

...However, as discussed above, race-specific policies are often not designed to address fundamentally problems of the truly disadvantaged...

...The former refers to the constraints and opportunities associated with living in a neighborhood in which the population is overwhelmingly socially disadvantaged—constraints and opportunities that include the kinds of ecological niches that the residents of these communities occupy in terms of access to jobs, availability of marriageable partners, and exposure to conventional role models...

...In contrast to previous years, today's ghetto residents represent almost exclusively the most disadvantaged segments of the urban black community—including those families who have experienced long-term spells of poverty and/or welfare dependency, individuals who lack training and skills and have either experienced periods of persistent unemployment or have dropped out of the labor force altogether, and individuals who are frequently involved in street criminal activity...

...Until publication in 1976 of Herbert Gutman's The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, most scholars had believed otherwise...

...Moreover, preliminary evidence from Wisconsin suggests that this program carries little or no additional cost to the state...

...More important, such universal programs tend to draw more political support from the general public because they are available not only to the poor but to the working- and middle-class segments as well...

...Skin color was part of the problem but it was not all of it...

...Confined by restrictive covenants to communities also inhabited by the urban black lower classes, the black working and middle classes in earlier years provided stability to inner-city neighborhoods and perpetuated and reinforced societal norms and values...

...The younger a woman is, the more likely she is WINTER • 1988 • 57 to bear a child out of wedlock, head up a new household, and depend on welfare...