The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families with children, reflecting a conception of the black middle class as principally composed of this family type. If that conception is correct, then declining rates of marriage and childrearing would imply a decline in the presence and vitality of the black…

The condition of life experienced by people of lower social-class position tend to impair their ability to deal resourcefully with the problematic and the stressful. Such impairment would result only for people who are both genetically vulnerable and exposed to considerable stress--these may affect the lowest social classes with special severity.…