When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor [Paperback]

William Julius Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0394579356 | ISBN-13: 978-0394579351 | Edition: 1

For the first time in the 20th century, the majority of adults in the inner cities are not working. In an important and long-awaited study, one of the country's leading sociologists, the acclaimed author of The Truly Disadvantaged, analyzes the disappearance of work and its effects on the inner city of Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An unofficial adviser to President Bill Clinton, Wilson has become a celebrity of sorts. A former University of Chicago professor, Wilson--currently on staff at Harvard--has been profiled in The New Yorker and dubbed one of America's most influential people by Time magazine. A respected thinker on issues of race and poverty, the author of The Declining Significance of Race and The Truly Disadvantaged offers his take on welfare and inner-city joblessness in When Work Disappears. Racism, Wilson argues, plays increasingly less of a role in urban problems. More significant, he claims, are changes in the global economy and the disappearance of unskilled but decent-paying jobs near cities; according to Wilson, these factors have deprived the urban working class of steady jobs, destroyed inner-city businesses, and caused younger, upwardly mobile residents to flee for the suburbs.

From Publishers Weekly

Record levels of unemployment and disappearing jobs in inner-city neighborhoods are the root cause of poverty and social distress among African Americans, contends Wilson, an eminent University of Chicago sociology professor. A galvanizing blueprint for concerned citizens and policy makers, his scholarly study focuses on Chicago's inner-city poor, using three surveys he conducted between 1987 and 1993. Wilson (The Truly Disadvantaged) sees a direct link between growing joblessness and what he calls ghetto-related behavior and attitudes?fatherless children born out of wedlock, drugs, crime, gang violence, hopelessness?but unlike those who blame a "culture of poverty," he emphasizes that structural changes can effect a turnaround. His plan to reverse declining employment and social inequality includes proposals for city-suburban collaboration, private-sector partnerships with public schools, national health insurance, and time limits on welfare for able-bodied recipients combined with guaranteed jobs in a public-works program modeled on the New Deal's Works Progress Administration.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (August 20, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394579356
• ISBN-13: 978-0394579351
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars political editor's review is completely unfounded, July 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (Paperback)

I wish to write this review primarily as a repudiation of the completely inaccurate review written by this site's political editor. The unnamed reviewer's main hypothesis was that When Work Disappears fails to answer two main questions: 1) the reason for the exodus of jobs from the inner city, and 2) the question of whether inner-city black males are willing to work, regardless of the availability of jobs. I find it difficult to believe that any reasoning person could have made such a statement after reading When Work Disappears. Indeed, a brief scan of the table of contents would reveal that a substantial portion of the book was devoted to answering these very questions. The reviewer's first assertion was that there was a "chicken or the egg" dilemma concerning the exodus of inner-city jobs and the social dysfunction of inner-city residents. Did the exodus of jobs cause aberrant behavior, or did aberrant behavior cause the exodus of jobs? I wish to state fir! ! stly, that a comparison of the conditions of inner-city neighborhoods in the 1940's and 1950's when people were working, to the conditions of these communities today should be sufficient to answer this question without the aid of a work as extensive as When Work Disappears. Nonetheless, this rather obvious question is not overlooked by Wilson, as the reviewer suggests, but is extensively and repeatedly explored. On page xx of the introductory material, Wilson clearly states his belief that "If inner-city black workers are experiencing the greatest problems of joblessness, it is a more extreme form of economic marginality that has affected most Americans since 1980" He goes on to clearly explain throughout the book that most of the jobs that left the inner-city left because of the global trends of downsizing, the exodus of more mobile industries like automobiles and textiles to cheaper labor markets, and the resultant shift of the economy from an inner-city factory ba! ! se to a largely suburban service base. He states that these! trends are not restricted to the inner- city, though inner-city communities tend to bear the brunt of the social dislocation these trends produce. A summary of Wilson's findings on these phenomena can be found on pages 139-143. The reviewer went on to state that Wilson's proposed solution of job creation failed to take into account the unwillingness of blacks to work within the existing job opportunities of the fast food industry. This statement is not supported by the fact that nearly the entirety of the first 105 pages of When Work Disappears is devoted in part or in whole to answering this very question. Wilson repeatedly states that the reason blacks do not take these jobs is that they do not pay a living wage, and that taking into account health benefits, child care, and transportation, fast food occupations pay much less than welfare (which is already substantially below the poverty rate). He also states that the availability of much more income in the informal (drug) ! ! economy also contributes to blacks seeking other alternatives to low-wage employment. Wilson repeatedly asserts that only living wage employment could be viewed as a long term solution to disproportionately high unemployment in the inner-city. For the reviewer to state that these questions were answered insufficiently would be his prerogative. To suggest that they were not addressed is simply incompetent. These oversights were so glaring, that it leads me to doubt whether the interviewer actually read the book at all. I found his or her review to be biased, and to border on outright racism. It is one thing to dislike a book, it is by far another for a representative of Amazon.com to assert in a literary review one's personal belief that black males are too lazy to find work His or her largely uninformed and unsupported insinuations may lead interested readers from reading one of the most thoroughly researched and insightful books on race and poverty in recent decades. Don'! ! t think of this as losing a customer, think of it as gainin! g a vocal and determined critic.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a sociology tour de force, October 29, 2001

By 

Matt Davis (Wichita, KS United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Work Disappears : The World of the New Urban Poor (Paperback)

I think there are two major problems with theories that attempt to explain black poverty as something completely or primarily due to welfare, "culture", or genetics: first, they seem to lack a comprehensive understanding of African-American history. Second, from everything I've seen, such theories totally ignore the very similar conditions experienced by other ethnic/national minority groups in many advanced as well as developing countries (ex: Gypsies, Maori, Aboriginies, etc.). On the other hand, an author such as Wilson offers a very refreshing insight into the conditions of the urban poor. While his policy prescriptions call for a much stronger, activist government, the focus of this book is the analysis of the current conditions of the black urban poor and how it reached it's current state. In that sense, it should be accesible to all political stripes. Also, this book is not in any way a "marxist" critique; it never criticizes American or global "capitalism" as the cause of the poor's suffering. The citing of socio-economic factors, such as technological and industrial changes, as a major factor in the deteriorating conditions of the urban poor is quite a different thing than stating that one can only solve such problems by overthrowing capitalism (this is a marxist perspective, not Wilsons). Also, the author's analysis does not lack addressing issues of "personal responsibility" or cultural, behavioral norms. On the contrary, he takes these very sensitive issues head-on and concludes that in some important ways there is a distinctive sub-culture (a "culture of poverty"), but not for the reasons some intellectuals assert (welfare, genetics, etc.). Differing social norms concerning work ethic, education, attitudes at work, etc. primarily exist because of the high rate of concentration and separation of the black urban poor from white, middle-class society. Those who grow up in a community where joblessness is actually the norm (and all of its associated ills) will not have adequate preparation for decent-paying jobs that require good education, work references, and interpersonal skills. I could say so much more, but I should probably limit this review to concluding that Wilson's work is destined to become a classic sociological reference and an important guide for other writers as well as policy-makers.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What do jobs have to do with it? Everything., February 26, 2003

By 

Kenneth Young (Elkins Park, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Work Disappears : The World of the New Urban Poor (Paperback)

The essence of my reading of the book is that concentrated joblessness, not just concentrated poverty, is afflicting many people in old urban areas, and that prolonged joblessness, even more than prolonged poverty, is a profoundly disabling condition not only for individuals, but for communities, and has intergenerational effects.

Support for his theories is drawn from survey and ethnographic reseach with ghetto and non-ghetto residents and Us census data, as well as evidence from projects which involved relocation from ghetto to non-ghetto areas.

Focused on the American urban ghettos, with most of its data drawn from Chicago area studies, Wilson discusses the overlap of ghetto poverty areas, jobless ghettos, and the effects of living in each. He gives significant attention to the role of race- segregation, racially coded policy, ghetto culture, and attitudes of employers towards race and their employees. Of special interest is his aside on the opinions of black employers to black employees (reflective of the general pool of employers opinions towards black employees).

Wilson also examines ghetto related culture, the informal economies of the ghetto, and the place of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the decision making calculus of ghetto residents.

What is, IMHO, key to reading this book is keeping in mind that areas of ghetto poverty and ghetto joblessness are growing, deepening, and are not in a position to self-correct. Put simply, if joblessness is a key factor in the creation of ghettos, it needs to be addressed by supply-side solutions (job creation & employment of last resort, fostering adequate social supports (childcare, etc.)), and not simply reconfiguring the stick of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (the successor program to AFDC ).

If you're looking for a detailed set of proposals, Wilson retreads several good ideas (universal healthcare among them), but you'll be able to find far more developed versions of the same proposals elsewhere. If you're looking for a more in-depth look at poverty and joblessness in urban areas, however, this is an excellent place to start.