This document summarizes findings from the Research Project on Income Inequality and Poverty in Los Angeles. The figures reported are based on an analysis of published and unpublished data sets, including the Public Use Microdata Sets for the 1970 and 1980 decennial Census of Population, the Current Population Surveys, and the American Housing…

Increasingly, poverty has become concentrated among the urban underclass in the United States. The dramatic economic changes underlying this situation have taken place within the context of larger changes in global, national, and regional political economies, including such factors as industrial restructuring and migration flows. In addition, the…

This report contains the text of five briefings on research in Rand's Urban Policy Analysis program. "Brief History of Rand's Urban Policy Analysis Program," by Barbara R. Williams, discusses the changing Federal role in urban policy, problems encountered in Rand's attempt during the early 1970s to examine the central policy problems of…

This document presents a report on the educational needs of homeless children in New York City. Data were analyzed from the following sources: (1) review of the current literature on the impact of homelessness on the physical and emotional well-being of children; (2) field-based interviews with 277 families in New York's shelters and hotels; and…

Traces development of U.S. cities through the colonial town, market place town, radial center, fringe city, and the multicentered metropolis. Notes the 1970 census showed the United States as a suburban nation. Examines the housing patterns of urban cities that continue to lose population. (NL)

Reviews recent literature on urban politics and urban policy. Focuses on issues faced by cities of the 1990s: city planning, growth, politics, problems of housing, homelessness, cost of government, racial, and ethnic conflicts. Suggests that field trips and computer simulations can be used in college courses in urban studies. (CH)

Research is examining the processes by which persistent and concentrated urban poverty is created, maintained, prevented, or overcome. This paper reports on discussion and suggestions generated in a planning meeting of the Social Science Research Council's Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass held on September 21-23, 1988. Issues…

Recognizing the broad range of social and economic limitations associated with residential segregation, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations initiated a research program to define the extent of these problems and to advance strategies for dealing with them. The initial phase of the project commissioned research papers which were reviewed and…

This review of perspectives on the current status and policy issues of urban America is divided into nine chapters, each of which includes a bibliography. Chapter one presents an overview of the postindustrial demographic and economic changes in the United States and the Federal government's response to these changes. The ongoing transformation of…

Although the vast majority of single mothers do not fit the description of an underclass, there is a small group of predominantly black single mothers concentrated in northern urban ghettos that is persistently weakly attached to the labor force, socially isolated, and reproducing itself. Although welfare programs are necessary for those who are…

William Julius Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged" blames the rise in the Black urban underclass on the rapid, systemic, and structural changes in the economy in the 1970s, which left Black unemployment at a spectacularly high rate. His insights should be acknowledged and his recommendations heeded. (BJV)