Customer Reviews

Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Structural changes in the economy have adversely affected those with lower levels of education and job skills leading to slow or negative growth in wages, the decline in the demand for low skilled labor has disproportionately impacted inner-city minorities who are disavantaged due to the poor quality of education in inner-city schools. Jargowsky takes us on an inside look at high poverty neighborhoods, however his tour doesn't point the finger at the residents of the neighborhoods. His empirical study lets us know that poverty is not sustained by the attitudes, behaviors , and values also known as the "culture of poverty" of the inhabitants of these areas. He tells us that not all poor people live in high poverty areas and that all the residents in high poverty areas are not poor. He says that the contributing and sustaining factors of poverty are not limited to but include deindustrialization, deconcentration, societal and instutional practices, income inequality, and racial and economic segregation. Jargowsky gives us the limatations and strengths of his argument. He also gives the reader the opportunity to see other's work on the situation and how his study differs from those. For example he looks at all the metropolitan areas and not those considered to be the major or larger metropolitan areas. He looks at every census tract and declares neighborhoods as high poverty if they have poverty levels over 40 percent. This is a sociological study so it is chocked full of studies, tables, and figures, which only serve to ground his point and provide statistical evidence. While this book is not practical for a beginner to social studies, Poverty and Place does back up the statistical conclusions with comprehendable conclusions. Jargowsky also tells us of the implications of this study and the effect it should have on policy implementations to rid our country of poverty and this notion of the underclass. His conclusion states: Neighborhood poverty is the predictable result of two metropolitan processes: income generation and neighborhood sorting. although a "tangle of pathology" may emerge in such neighborhoods, the pathologies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The root causes of the increases in ghettos and barrios in many northern cities are changing opportunity structure faced by the minority community,and to a lesser degree, the changing spatial organization of the metropolis. His policy implications state that: Given the responsiveness of neighborhood poverty to changes in economic opportunity, the potential exists for macroeconomic policies to have a large impact on the problem. To the extent that incomes continue to stagnate or even decline and inequality continues to increase, neighborhood poverty will rise. He reminds us that neighborhood poverty is a complex problem. The hopelessness and despair in many poor neighborhoods is a symptom of broader metropolitan processes. If the nation pursues policies that raise incomes, reduce inequality, and uniter rather than divide our society, neighborhood poverty can be significantly reduced and its effects ameliorated. This is definitely a book that aids in our understanding of poverty and its implications for residents of our neighborhoods.