Harrell R. Rodgers Jr. - Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s

Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...42

POOR
WOMEN,
POOR
CHILDREN

POOR
WOMEN,
POOR
CHILDREN

American Poverty in the 1990s

HARRELL R. RODGERS, Jr.

Third
Edition

First published 1996 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Third edition
Copyright 1996 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.
First and revised editions published under the title Poor Women, Poor Families:
The Economic Plight of Americas Female-Headed Households,
copyright 1986 and 1990 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catatoging-in-Publication Data

Rodgers, Harrell R.
Poor women, poor children : American poverty in
the 1990s/by Harrell R. Rodgers, Jr.3rd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Poor women, poor families.
Rev. ed. 1990.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1563246074 (alk. paper).
ISBN 1563246082 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Women heads of householdsUnited States.
2. Poor womenUnited States.
3. WomenEmploymentUnited States.
4. Public welfareUnited States.
I. Rodgers, Harrell R. Poor women, poor families.
II. Title.
HV1445.R64 1996
362.830973dc20 9541481
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563246081 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563246074 (hbk)

Contents

---

---

Tables

Figures

---

In writing the third edition of this book I entertained the perfectly absurd notion on more than one occasion that the entire U.S. Congress was engaged in a conspiracy to thwart my efforts. Congress spent most of 1995 seriously debating and rewriting various versions of a major overhaul of welfare, announcing one completion date after another. As I wrote and rewrote along with them, 199S came to an end with no agreement between Congress and the president on reform. For the most part unhampered by Congress, more than half the states adopted major welfare reform plans, while most of the other states are debating major innovations. Thus, this edition was written during a period of change in welfare policy unprecedented since the 1960s. I have endeavored throughout the book to capture this mood and the thrust and implications of the changes taking place.

As in writing the previous editions of this book, I have been blessed with an excellent base of academic literature and considerable personal assistance. Jean Tash, statistical assistant, at the Bureau of the Census was always inspired and tireless in helping me track down unpublished data and obtain assistance from other researchers within the Departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services. Gordon Fisher, at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, provided invaluable insights into the origins and development of the federal poverty standards and also directed me to other valuable research. Glenn Phillips, with the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, took time out of a frantic schedule on more than one occasion to help me locate much-needed data and information. To each my warmest thanks.

The crew at M.E. Sharpe was, as usual, wonderful. Patricia Kolb, executive editor, encouraged me to undertake this edition and organized my efforts. Her assistant, Elizabeth T. Granda, served as the communication specialist to keep the working team in contact Eileen M. Gaffney, production editor, did the hard work. She directed the editing, artwork, and printing and saw that the project was finished. To each my continuing thanks and admiration.

Henry Trueba, senior vice president and provost, Richard Rozelle, dean of social sciences, and Kent Tedin, chair of political science, at the University of Houston combined their efforts to provide me with time off to write this book. I am most grateful for their kindness and support.

I am blessed with a wonderful partner in my wife, Lynne. This year she took time out of her own busy schedule to give birth to Michael James. With all my love, this book is dedicated to Michael and his truly wonderful mother.

POOR
WOMEN,
POOR
CHILDREN

Chapter 1
The Increasing Numbers of Poor Women and Children

---

It is up to us to determine whether the years ahead will be for humankind a curse or a blessing.

Elie Wiesel

Poverty continues to be one of Americas most serious social problems. Despite the fact that America may be the richest nation in the world, a substantial proportion of the American population lives in poverty. In 1993 the federal government counted 39.3 million Americans living below the poverty line, about 15 percent of the population (Bureau of the Census 1995, xvi). This is a huge number of people. Fewer than 30 million people live in all of Canada. The American poverty population is, in fact, larger than the combined total populations of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Delaware, West Virginia, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Poverty has increased in recent years and has proven an extremely difficult problem to ameliorate, in significant part because one of the most vulnerable groupsmother-only familieshas grown very rapidly over the last thirty years as a proportion of all families. Between 1970 and 1993 the number of mother-only families with children more than doubled, from 3.8 million to 8.7 million (Figure 1.1). During this same period, the number of two-parent families with children increased by only 1.3 percent. As a consequence of these changes, by 1993 almost one of every four American families with children was headed by a woman, compared to one in ten in 1960 (Bureau of the Census 1995, D22).

As Table 1.1 (p. 6) shows, in 1960 only 8 percent of all children under eighteen lived in a family headed by a single woman. In 1993 the percentage was almost one in four, 23.3 percent, including some 17 percent of white children, 28 percent of Hispanic children, and a majority, 54 percent, of all black children (Figure 1.2 [p. 7]). The number of children in single-parent families has increased dramatically. In 1993 some 17.9 million children lived with only one parent, 87 percent of thoseover 15 millionwith their mother. In 1960 a third of that number, about 5 million children, lived in mother-only families (Table 1.1). Of the current generation of all American children, more than half will spend some of their childhood in a household headed by a single mother (Sweet and Bumpass 1987; Bumpass and Raley 1993). A significant percentage will spend their entire childhood in a mother-only family.

Next page

1234567...42

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s»

Look at similar books to Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Kenan Heise

The Book of the Poor: Who They Are, What They Say, and How To End Their Poverty

Alice OConnor

Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History

David Englander

Poverty and Poor Law Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 1834-1914: From Chadwick to Booth

Ash Barker

Make Poverty Personal: Taking the Poor as Seriously as the Bible Does

Liz Theoharis

Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor

Frederic C. Thomas

Calcutta Poor: Inquiry Into the Intractability of Poverty

Steve Corbett

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor ... and Yourself

Seabrook

Pauperland: Poverty and the Poor in Britain

Raz

Whats Wrong with the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty

Shekhar Shah

Bangladesh: from counting the poor to making the poor count

Caroline M. Robb

Can the poor influence policy?: participatory poverty assessments in the developing world, Page 823

Deepa Narayan-Parker

Voices of the poor: poverty and social capital in Tanzania

Discussion, reviews of the book Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.