One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All [Hardcover]

Mark Robert Rank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

Despite its enormous wealth, the United States leads the industrialized world in poverty. One Nation, Underprivileged unravels this disturbing paradox by offering a unique and radically different understanding of American poverty. It debunks many of our most common myths about the poor, while at the same time provides a powerful new framework for addressing this enormous social and economic problem.
Mark Robert Rank vividly shows that the fundamental causes of poverty are to be found in our economic structure and political policy failures, rather than individual shortcomings or attitudes. He establishes for the first time that a significant percentage of Americans will experience poverty during their adult lifetimes, and firmly demonstrates that poverty is an issue of vital national concern.
Ultimately, Rank provides us with a new paradigm for understanding poverty, and outlines an innovative set of strategies that will reduce American poverty. One Nation, Underprivileged represents a profound starting point for rekindling a national focus upon America's most vexing social and economic problem.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Professor Rank, author of Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America (1994), meticulously builds the case that, despite America's great wealth, society as a whole has abnegated its responsibility to ease the burdens of the nation's poor even while creating an economic system that structurally ensures that a great portion of its citizens will live in poverty. The author debunks the traditional belief that the poor are largely responsible for their own condition. He equates the economy to a game of musical chairs, with a limited amount of jobs substituting for chairs. Thus in this book an amazing statistic is brought out for the first time: nearly one-half of all people in America spend at least one year of their lives in poverty. Rank argues for a recapturing of our Judeo-Christian ethic and that individuals must pay more than lip service to the principles of liberty, justice, equality, and democracy so that the promise of the Pledge of Allegiance will not be "liberty and justice for some," but for all. Allen Weakland
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Review

"An admirable and thoughtful book...Social Forces

"A vital book that reminds us of the greatest blind spot in American politics."--Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic

"Rank's book is a must read for students and scholars studying the poverty problem. It is emotionally moving, intellectually stimulating and it inspires us to action." --International Journal of Social Welfare

"Amid the commercial babble of most messages heard in a land of plenty, Rank's thesis definitely deserves a higher profile." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

An analytical yet passionate critique of the harsh economic reality of poverty, which will affect most of us during our lives --Z

"Rank stands out amid the rising chorus of authors who are decrying wage stagnation and widening income gap in that he tackles the very concept of poverty and its dimensions to demonstrate how and why its pervasiveness makes it a moral and political problem that affects everyone." --America, the National Catholic Weekly

"...an engaging book, nontechnical in its presentation of the facts, and written with great compassion for the least fortunate among us. This volume also brings together a large and complex literature on poverty and new empirical evidence on the dynamics of poverty." --Daniel T. Lichter, Ohio State University Journal of Marriage and Family

"Rank writes well, and his proposals reflect the state of the policy art on the more liberal end of the political spectrum. Amid all the political discourse about individual deficiencies, his focus on the structural causes of poverty is especially welcome."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

"Deconstructing the dominant ideology and poverty, Rank insists that since the poor are poor for structural reasons, we should stop thinking about them as a tribe apart...Rank writes well, and his proposals reflect the state of the policy art on the more liberal end of the political spectrum. Amid all the political discourse about individual deficiencies, his focus on the structural causes of poverty is especially welcome."--Joel Blau, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

"One Nation, Underprivileged, calls the social worker in community practice to act on a new definition of poverty that addresses the structural inequities in our economic system rather than the implied failure of individuals and families....This is a book for practitioners whose work will be renewed and affirmed by Rank's energy and his reminder of the power of coaltiions to affect political change. Equally, this book is a text that will give students in the social sciences direction as they consider their place as providers in confronting the tremendous momentum of America's capitalism and its impact on the poor....a passionate treatment of poverty that will benefit and inspire the practitioner and citizen activist alike."--Journal of Community Practice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195101685
• ISBN-13: 978-0195101683
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book!, May 3, 2005

By 

J. Myerson (Saint Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Hardcover)

From its riveting cover photograph to the call to action in the final chapter, this book held my attention and made me think about poverty in this country in a way I never had before. As a scientist, it takes more than stirring rhetoric to affect my thinking about important issues like this one; it takes a coherent argument supported by checkable facts. And that is precisely what the book delivers (along with some stirring rhetoric). Two important points stand out in my mind. First, poverty isn't something that just happens to other kinds of people, as the author demonstrates through careful analysis of several large, longitudinal data sets; second, poverty is not the result of personal deficiencies, neither moral, motivational, or intellectual weaknesses (as conservatives would claim) nor educational Rather, poverty is a necessary consequence of the current structure of our economic and social systems. As the book points out, however, this does mean the problem is unsolvable. This is an important book that goes beyond the usual partisan positions to propose a new paradigm for the analysis and remediation of socioeconomic inequalities, and I strongly recommend it!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Book to Understanding Poverty, April 29, 2005

By 

Tim M. (Sarasota, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Hardcover)

"One Nation, Underprivileged" is a wonderful companion book to both David Shipler's "The Working Poor" and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed." While Shipler and Ehrenreich do a great job in providing in-depth accounts of surviving in poverty, Rank's book provides a tremendously helpful context for understanding why poverty occurs in the first place, and what we can do about it. If you've read either Shipler or Ehrenreich, definitely read Rank's book to fill out the picture. It provides the arguments and substance to truly understand the issue of poverty.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Important concepts, lackluster book, April 20, 2005

By 

MercyStreet (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Hardcover)

This book brings into the mainstream the fundamentals of poverty that are largely ignored or unknown by the general public. The information is solid. The writing, unfortunately, leaves something to be desired. The text is redundant and didactic, and on the level of the sentence, it's boring. A better writer could have written this book in about two-thirds the pages. You could read selected chapters of this book for key concepts, but unless you need the same metaphors pitched to you ten different ways, pick one of the many better written povery exposés out there.