When Work Disappears

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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 attitudesfatherless children born out of wedlock, drugs, crime, gang violence, hopelessnessbut 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. (Sept.)

Mary Carroll

Drawing on recent research and three projects sociologist Wilson (now at Harvard after more than 20 years at the University of Chicago) directed, "When Work Disappears" seeks to replace an ideology-driven debate that explains ghetto problems as caused by "either" structural factors such as race "or" cultural pathologies. Wilson's "broader vision" recognizes structural, cultural, "and" social-psychological factors and analyzes "their interaction in determining the experiences and life chances of inner-city residents." Poverty areas, Wilson notes, experience an extreme form of trends that impact most Americans, e.g., increasing economic insecurity and changes in values that weaken the appeal of the traditional family. Surveys of Chicago's working and welfare poor--and area employers--shatter stereotypes but confirm the isolation and limited options of people in poverty areas. Wilson traces historical U.S. attitudes about poverty, welfare, and race before suggesting policies to "break the cycle of joblessness and improve [students'] preparation for the new [global] labor market." Given the power Wilson attributes to jobs, he pays too little attention to arguments (such as Rifkin's The End of Work, 1994) that full-time employment may soon disappear for most Americans, but Wilson's high profile and well-designed research ensure interest.

Kirkus Reviews

A sharp rejoinder, presented with cool and pitiless logic, to conservative analysis of the largely black urban underclass. Harvard sociologist Wilson (The Truly Disadvantaged, not reviewed; The Declining Significance of Race, 1978) bases much of this work on a comprehensive survey he conducted while at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years. The "new urban poverty" that Wilson describes consists of poor, segregated areas in which most adults either are unemployed or have opted out of the workforce completely. Joblessness has only worsened, even after civil-rights era gains. Yet, unlike such critics of the welfare state as Charles Murray and George Gilder, Wilson traces this urban devolution not simply to a "culture of poverty," but to a more complicated, interacting set of social, structural, cultural, and psychological factors. Underlying accelerated ghetto joblessness has been the US transition from a manufacturing to a service economy—a development that particularly devastated urban blacks, who often possess few of the skills (e.g., computer, oral, and verbal proficiency) needed in the new economy. Other factors worsening this plight (especially for black males) include the removal of jobs from cities to suburbs, the departure from inner cities of a black middle class that offered positive role models, and the rise of single-parent families. But, quoting from interviews with survey participants, Wilson notes that, like society at large, inner-city blacks desperately want to work. He concludes with policy recommendations that, while designed to alleviate inner-city conditions, are race-neutral enough to attract support from the white middle classas well. These recommendations include massive WPA-style jobs creation, expansion of the earned income-tax credit, city-suburban cooperation, and national performance standards in public schools. A sophisticated analysis of a seemingly intractable dilemma that more than justifies Wilson's recent inclusion among Time magazine's group of "America's 25 Most Influential People."