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Poverty in America: A Handbook |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Iceland History > Item 179
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Poverty in America: A Handbook
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by John Iceland
Sales Rank: 179932
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$6.99
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 223 pages
Published by: University of California PressEdition: 2nd Edition February 6, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0520248414
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0520248410
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
Weighs: 11.2 ounces
Product Description
In a remarkably concise, readable, and accessible format, John Iceland provides a comprehensive picture of poverty in America, He shows how poverty is measured and understood and how it has changed over time, as well as how public policies have grappled with poverty as a political issue and an economic reality. This edition has been updated and includes a new preface.
From the Inside Flap
Praise for the first edition:
"Highly readable. Will very likely become a standard reference for students of poverty."--William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears
"With succinct and engaging prose, Poverty in America covers the gamut --from theoretical issues to measurement to history to public policy--better than any other book out there right now."--Dalton Conley, author of Honky
Reader Reviews
This is a very misleading book. There were many points that I would criticize, but it would take an entire book to do that. So I'll pick out three important issues and focus on those. Issue One: Welfare and Out of Wedlock Childbirths One example is the effect of welfare on out of wedlock childbirths. On page 59 Iceland criticizes the theory that welfare payments are responsible for increased rates of out of wedlock childbirths. Iceland points to the fact that inflation-adjusted welfare payments have declined, whereas out of wedlock childbirths have increased. But single mothers are available for other assistance programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid. When the full package of benefits is included, the total aid available to single mothers has kept up with inflation. On page 136 Iceland cites Robert Moffit's 1992 research showing that welfare has only caused a slight increase in out of wedlock childbirths. But after other researchers such as Mark Rosenzweig and the economists Jeff Grogger and Stephen Bronars found a large connection, Moffit reexamined the issue. His more thorough methodology and found that welfare did cause a significant increase in out of wedlock childbirths. Moffit reported this in 1998. Why did Iceland mention his 1992 research but not his 1998 research? Issue Two: The Color of Poverty One problem is that Iceland documents the fact that poverty statistics show that most of the poor are white. On page 38 he criticizes the fact that most media reports tend to show pictures of blacks when discussing poverty, thus creating a false perception. But as Iceland discusses, most poverty is short term, usually from a divorce, a death, or a lost job. On page 49 he mentions that black children make up a majority of the long term poor. I would submit that when people think about poverty they think about long term poverty, not brief poverty spells. Like it or not, Americans have to grapple with the fact that entrenched, generational poverty is disproportionately black. Issue Three: Cause of Poverty The biggest problem with the book is its analysis of the cause of poverty. It concludes that out of wedlock childbirths are a minor cause relative to the inequality embedded in a free market, capitalist society. But the way it reaches that conclusion is through a statistical analysis in which possible causes are each treated as independent variables to see which explains the greatest amount of poverty. But supporters of the theory that poverty is caused by out of wedlock childbirths do not blame the out of wedlock birth in itself. After all, college educated single mothers show that an out of wedlock childbirth is not necessarily a ticket to poverty. The problem is the lost opportunity in terms of the chance of graduating high school and college. Page 422 of the bipartisan policy book The New World of Welfare documents the fact that while most out of wedlock childbirths happen to women in their 20's, half of all *first* out of wedlock childbirths happen to women in their teens (fortunately this is on the decline). This is early enough to interfere with the mother's education, and makes it much more likely that she will drop out, or not go to college. The lesson is that the other factors that cause poverty, such as education, are dependent upon family breakdown. They are not independent variables, and any statistical analysis that treats them as though they were independent will come up with flawed results. There is another problem. Even if Iceland is correct that out of wedlock childbirths do not cause poverty, the research of Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur in their landmark book Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps documents the fact that children of single mothers are more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs, suffer from depression or low self-esteem, have lower lifetime earnings, and are more likely to have out of wedlock children themselves. Furthermore, only about half of this gap can be attributed to poverty itself. Fatherlessness is an independent contributing factor. I would instead recommend that interested readers check out The New World of Welfare edited by Rebecca Blanks and Ron Haskins. It is a bipartisan collection of essays on welfare and poverty representing the left and right. It is interesting that none of the "liberal" contributors disagreed with the "conservative" claim that family breakdown is an important cause of poverty. And on the other side, none of the "conservatives" disagreed with the liberal claim that although welfare reform has been successful, there have been some women who are worse off. The liberal theory could be put this way: "family breakdown is an important cause of poverty, but we need to find a way to both provide aid *and* fix the family." The only differences are on policy prescriptions, not analysis. It is a refreshing bit of consensus in an otherwise acrimonious debate. I would also recommend Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality by Thomas Sowell and The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families by James Wilson.
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Poverty in America: A Handbook
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