It Takes a Nation [Hardcover]

Rebecca M. Blank (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691026750 | ISBN-13: 978-0691026756 | Publication Date: December 9, 1996 | Edition: 1

As Americans prepare to dismantle the nation's welfare system, clich

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important book on poverty bound to displease some liberals while challenging both libertarian and cultural conservatives to rethink, if not abandon, their respective anti-poverty positions. . . . Even those who disagree strongly with Blank's analysis should agree that It Takes a Nation takes a prize for honest, meticulous, and morally alert scholarship." -- John J. DiIulio, Jr., The Weekly Standard

"Even those who disagree strongly with Blank's analysis should agree that It Takes a Nation takes a prize for honest, meticulous, and morally alert scholarship." -- John J. Dilulio, Jr., The Weekly Standard

An important book on poverty bound to displease some liberals while challenging both libertarian and cultural conservatives to rethink, if not abandon, their respective anti-poverty positions. . . . Even those who disagree strongly with Blank's analysis should agree that It Takes a Nation takes a prize for honest, meticulous, and morally alert scholarship. -- Review

Just as the brave new world of welfare reform descends upon the dependent poor, Rebecca Blank, a labor economist at Northwestern University, publishes It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty--a book whose forward-looking subtitle belies its touchingly nostalgic message. . . . "Listening to the public statements about the poor, and about the nature and history of U.S. antipoverty efforts, I became increasingly angry," Blank writes in her preface. Her book in progress took on a new purpose: to bring cool social-science expertise to a politically overheated debate. Ponderous, encyclopedic, unremittingly rational, It Takes a Nation provides an extended tutorial in poverty research. Recent social trends and most antipoverty programs are exhaustively dissected. Questions are answered and myths dispelled.

Here is the glaring weakness of It Takes a Nation: a failure of political analysis and imagination. . . . Because Blank fails to analyze what went wrong politically for welfare in the past, she cannot project feasible strategies for the future. . . .

Blank dismisses broad social programs as politically unfeasible, even though her own elaborate prescriptions are equally so. . . . Although she deftly synthesizes decades of academic research, her book will, predictably, never achieve even a fraction of the political influence attained by Charles Murray's factually sloppy 1984 manifesto, Losing Ground, which became the veritable bible of the Reaganite assault on welfare. In politics, Murray and his fellow conservatives know, the use of emotional images and moral appeals to a majority matter much more than accurate statistical tables. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Theda Skocpol

From the Publisher

As Americans prepare to dismantle the nation's welfare system, cliches and slogans proliferate, ranging from charges that the poor are simply lazy to claims that existing antipoverty programs have failed completely. In this impeccably researched book, Rebecca Blank provides the definitive antidote to the scapegoating, guesswork, and outright misinformation of today's welfare debates. Demonstrating that government aid has been far more effective than most people think, she also explains that even private support for the poor depends extensively on public funds. It takes a nation to fight a problem as pervasive and subtle as modern poverty, and this book argues that we should continue to implement a mix of private and public programs. Federal, state, and local assistance should go hand in hand with private efforts at community development and personal empowerment and change.

The first part of the book investigates the changing nature of poverty in America. Poverty is harder to combat now than in the past, both because of the changing demographics of who is poor as well as the major deterioration in earnings among lessskilled workers. The second part of the book delves into policies designed to reduce poverty, presenting evidence that many though not all programs have done exactly what they set out to do. The final chapters provide an excellent review of recent policy changes and make workable suggestions for how to improve public assistance programs to assure a safety net, while still encouraging poor adults to find employment and support their families.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 372 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (December 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691026750
• ISBN-13: 978-0691026756
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, February 24, 2001

By 

Tom Munro "tomfrombrunswick" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: It Takes a Nation (Paperback)

This is a book that is full of facts. It analyses the studies of poverty that have occurred over the last 30 years. It concludes that a lot of popular views of poverty are wrong. The popular perceptions are that poverty is ghetto based, it is behavioral and untractable. Some groups in America tend to use stereotypes as a means of arguing for the reduction of welfare payments. These include the assertion that a large number of poor people are black single mothers. The decision to become a single mother in a time of freely available birth control and abortion suggests that the mother has made a considered decision to become pregnant.

The book examines the nature of poverty. The material is statistical but it breaks down a number of stereotypes. Poverty is far more diverse with poor people living in a range of settings and neighborhoods. A high percentage of the poor work poverty is due to a range of factors. The inability to obtain employment, the dependence on part time employment or factors which prevent the ability to obtain an income such as age or having the sole responsibility for raising children. Some social programs have been successful in reducing poverty amongst the aged.

In previous years it has been thought that economic growth has decreased poverty. This certainly was the case after the second world war and in the 1960's. The reason for this was the combination of increased work hours and an increase in wages at all levels. Since 1988 however this has not occurred. Poverty has increased despite economic growth. The reason for that is the decline in wage levels and availability of the jobs usually occupied by the poor. In 1994 the unemployment rate for people with a University qualification was 3% the rate for high school drop outs was 14% and for Afro American high school drop outs was 20%. Between 1979 and 1993 the wages for high school drop outs decreased by 22%. The situation is however worse for women who earn about 75% of what an unskilled male would earn. The problem of poverty is thus something which will be likely to occur despite what happens in the general economy.

The writer indicates that the amount spent on welfare by the Federal Government is low about 8% of the budget with Medicare contributing another 6%. These programs have been at a stable level since the 1980's. America spends far less on welfare than countries of comparative wealth. The author speculates that this is due to the nature of American history. The groups that have been poor have been recent immigrant arrivals or Afro-Americans. Rather than empathizing with such groups the broad population usually thinks that the problems of poverty relate to issues of laziness or other aspects relating to the different culture of the most recently arrived group.

An examination of the programs to date shows that they are generally reasonably successful and effective. In the 1960's pockets of Americans suffered from actual malnutrition. The food stamp program has solved this problem and the numbers of Americans starving has been reduced. In much the same way giving welfare recipients access to subsidized health care has reduced infant mortality. American programs tend to be more bureaucratic than in other countries and this make their administration more complex but not unduly so.

The author attempts to show that a number of other views of welfare are wrong. She produces statistical evidence to show that welfare payments do not lead to women becoming welfare queens and that most recipients are eager to get back into the work force.

Her main argument is a suggestion that Government assume the role of collecting child support from absent husbands. At the time of writing such support was only undertaken by the women themselves and this led to a low level of payment of support. In other countries the government collection of these payments has made a significant improvement in the welfare of women and children.

The book is readable and it is at all times based on statistical material rather than anecdote. The conclusion is that because of the decline in non skilled wages poverty will be a problem in America for some time regardless of growth. There is no simple solution and a range of solutions must be constructed for what is a complex problem.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chock full of useful information, but tough to read, October 4, 2009

By 

Jason Stokes (St. Louis) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: It Takes a Nation (Paperback)

I really wanted to give this book a 5 star rating. It does a spectacular job of synthesizing information from many sources to describe the current state (as of 1995) of poverty in America, the existing programs targeting poverty reduction, and laying out a platform for future programs. It is one of the few books to not only describe what is wrong now, but also make useful, pragmatic suggestions for future improvement. I applaud all of that. I did have to take away one star as the book is incredibly dense reading. I could see how it would make a useful textbook in conjunction with class discussions, but as a book in my field of interest I picked up one day, it took me an incredibly long time to read. It seems that the facts all blur together into a mass of data with commentary in between. I don't think I could have done any better, mind you, but I can't wholly recommend it due to that.

The book also does an excellent job debunking many common myths with facts and data - eliminating the presumptions of readers that all poor want to be poor, sit around and collect huge checks, then spend the money on whatever they want. I wish I could convince everyone with a negative opinion of the poor to read this and see, as facts, that most of their assumptions are wrong.

The conclusion seems to be - though wages have gone up, they haven't budged for the uneducated and poorest, so they are falling even further behind. We need to do something about this - as current programs and the wave of anti-poor rhetoric isn't solving the problem.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and balanced, February 9, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (U.S.A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Takes a Nation (Hardcover)

This is one of the best books which I have ever read. This is very balanced and comprehensive. She emphasized the diversity of the domestic poverty problems. She mentioned not only policies or economics but also urban structure, the features of welfare institutions and so on. This is well-organazied and easy to understand. I recommend all people who are interested in the domestic poverty problems to read this book.