Daniel Moynihan - On understanding poverty; perspectives from the social sciences

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

The members of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Seminar on Race and Poverty

respectfully dedicate this work

and its companion volume to

Martin Luther King, Jr.

i929-1968

and

Robert Francis Kennedy

1925-1968

Few ideas are correct ones, and what are correct no one can ascertain; but with words we govern men.

benjamin disraeli, Contarini Fleming

* The Authors

Zahava D. Blum is Research Associate at the Department of Social Relations and at the Center for the Study of the Social Organization of Schools, The Johns Hopkins University, where she is also co-director of a research program entitled: "Education and Social Change: The Development of a System of Social Accounts."

Otis Dudley Duncan, Professor of Sociology and Associate Director, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, is co-author (with Peter M. Blau) of The American Occupational Structure and coauthor (with Beverly Duncan) of The Negro Population of Chicago.

Marc Fried is Research Professor, Institute of Human Sciences, Boston College, and was Director of the Institute. He has had extensive experience as a psychologist. Chapters by him are regularly included in books on the urban condition and renewal.

Herbert J. Gans is Visiting Professor of Sociology, Columbia University. His major publications are The Urban Villagers, The Levit-towners, and People and Plans: Essays on Urban Problems and Solutions. He has been Senior Staff Sociologist for the Center for Urban Education.

Oscar Lewis, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, is author of numerous articles and books including Five Families, The Children of Sanchez, Pedro Martinez, and La Vida.

S. M. Miller is Professor of Education and Sociology at New York University and Program Adviser in Social Development at the Ford Foundation. He is the co-editor (with Frank Riessman) of Social Class and Social Policy. He is author of Comparative Social Mobility and other books.

Walter Miller, Research Associate, Joint Center for Urban Studies, is author of City Gangs (forthcoming) and many articles. He was Director of the Roxbury Delinquency Research Project.

xii The Authors

Daniel P. Moynihan is on leave as Professor of Education and Urban Politics at Harvard University and was formerly Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies. He was Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy Planning and Research, 1963 to 1965 and is currently serving as Assistant for Urban Affairs to President Nixon. He is author of Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding.

Lee Rainwater is Professor of Sociology at Washington University and a Research Associate in the Social Science Institute there. He is Senior Editor of Trans-Action. He has written The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, And the Poor Get Children, and Work-ingman's Wife.

Pamela Roby is a doctoral candidate and Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology at New York University. She is currently working on a study of perception of the distribution of resources and is co-author of several articles with S. M. Miller.

Gerald Rosenthal, Associate Professor of Economics at Brandeis University, is Senior Associate of the Organization for Social and Technical Innovation (OSTI). Much of his work has been in medical economics. He is author of "The Operating Structure of the Medical Care Systeman Overview" for the Joint Economic Committee in A Compendium on Human Resources.

Peter H. Rossi is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Social Relations, The Johns Hopkins University. He was Director of the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago. He is author of Why Families Move and The Politics of Urban Renewal among other books.

Stephan Thernstrom is Associate Professor of History, Brandeis University, and a member of the Joint Center for Urban Studies. His books include Poverty, Planning, and Politics in the New Boston and Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a 19th Century City.

Harold Watts, Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty, and Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin, served as economist, Division of Research and Plans, Office of Economic Opportunity, 1965 to 1966.

Preface

TALCOTTPARSONS

It is a pleasure, on behalf of the Council, officers, and staff of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to write a brief preface to this volume of studies on poverty in the United States. Its publication is the result of the first continuing seminar of the Academy dealing with American domestic problems.

The genesis of this study of poverty may be of interest to the reader. In the years 1963 and 1964, at the height of the newly revived civil rights movement, Daedalus, the journal of the Academy, initiated a project for a comprehensive survey of knowledge and opinion about the status of the Negro American. This project followed the common Daedalus pattern of calling together a group of knowledgeable and representative people for a planning conference, commissioning papers to be written, and holding a second larger conference for discussion of the draft papers. In this case it proved, however, to be a larger than usual undertaking and the immediate result consisted in two large issues of Daedalus (Fall 1965 and Winter 1966). In the second of the two the unusual course was followed of publishing most of the actual transcript of the discussion of the second conference. Most of this material, with a few additions, was subsequently republished in 1966 in the Daedalus Library in the volume entitled The Negro American. 1

During the course of this study it became evident that the focus of the problem of the Negro was rapidly shifting to the urban North and that this shift was rapidly accentuating the intricate interlacing of the problems of race with those of poverty. Daniel P. Moynihan had been an active participant in the Negro-American study and was prevailed upon to assume, as chairman, the responsibility for organizing a continuing "seminar" on Problems of Race and Poverty. This group met for a day and a half once a month during the academic year 1966-1967.

xiv Preface

The present volume, and its companion, edited by James Sund-quist of The Brookings Institution, include the main fruits of these meetings, papers presented to the seminar and revised after discussion within the group. The first volume deals with theoretical aspects of the nature of poverty; the second with the development of federal anti-poverty policy. The editors and contributors to the two volumes would be the last to claim that they have presented a solution to the problem of poverty. In fact, the reader will observe considerable differences of opinion among the various authors. They have, however, certainly contributed to the description and clarification, on an interdisciplinary basis, of some of the issues which are currently being and will continue to be faced in working toward not one, but the necessary variety of solutions. This represents a considerable step in the mobilization of the resources of social science to provide a solid basis in empirical knowledge and theoretical analysis so urgently required in this area of public policy.