Urban Poverty afterThe Truly Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture

Abstract

▪ Abstract In what follows we critically assess a selection of the works on urban poverty that followed the publication of WJ Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged ( 1987 ), with a particular focus on the family, the neighborhood, and culture. We frame our discussion by assessing the broad explanations of the increased concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, in the section on the family, we address the rising out-of-wedlock and disproportionately high teenage birthrates of poor urban women. Next, we critique the literature on neighborhood effects. Finally, in the discussion of culture, we examine critically the new efforts at complementing structural explanations with cultural accounts. We conclude by calling for more comparative, cross-regional, and historical studies, broader conceptions of urban poverty, and a greater focus on Latinos and other ethnic groups.

The impact of neighbourhood and municipality characteristics on social cohesion in the Netherlands

“…Moreover, such communities generate feelings of threat and alienation, which hampers social interactions (Letki, 2008). Social cohesion is least, there where its positive effects are needed the most, namely in disadvantaged communities (Wilson, 1987;Sampson and Groves, 1989;Small and Newman, 2001;Sampson et al, 2002;Letki, 2008). A lack of social cohesion may have negative consequences for the quality of the community, which in turn could result in dropping social cohesion rates.…”

“…Economically deprived localities, criminal localities and localities with high residential mobility rates offer their inhabitants less opportunities for social interaction. Within these localities, circumstances make that contacts between people are not generally positive, making inhabitants more careful, fearful and less familiar with each other (Small and Newman, 2001;Sampson et al, 2002). This leads to our second research question: To what extent is social cohesion affected by economic deprivation, crime rates and residential mobility within neighbourhoods and municipalities in the Netherlands?…”

Neighborhoods, employment, and welfare use: Assessing the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic composition

“…Research thus got off to a slow start owing to this data limitation; but by the end of the 1990s, a substantial literature had emerged to suggest that growing up and living in a poor neighborhood significantly reduced an individual's life chances, holding constant individual and family characteristics (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, and Aber 1997b;Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002;Small and Newman 2001;Harding 2003).…”

Counterfactual Models of Neighborhood Effects: The Effect of Neighborhood Poverty on Dropping Out and Teenage Pregnancy

“…It is the developmental stage in which a young person's social world begins to incorporate peers and the larger community (Darling and Steinberg 1997). The theoretical mechanisms by which neighborhoods might influence adolescent outcomes have been extensively discussed and summarized elsewhere (e.g., Wilson 1987Wilson , 1996Jencks and Mayer 1990;Small and Newman 2001). I focus here on the complexities of evaluating whether neighborhood context affects youth outcomes.…”