Reviewed by Sharon Vandivere

In When Work Disappears, William Julius Wilson examines the impact of social environment on poor inner-city residents. He balances the prevailing view, exemplified in welfare reform, that poverty is due to the individuals' failings rather than to structural problems. However, unlike some that see discrimination as the single most important factor, Wilson also explores the idea that the disappearance of work has caused the deterioration of inner-city neighborhoods and dampened the futures of its children.

Poverty is one of the greatest problems facing America's children. Although poverty has declined by a few percentage points over the last several years, the U.S. Bureau of the Census reports that 19.9 percent of all children under 18 lived in poverty in 1997. In this book, which is intended to inform the public and social policy debates, Wilson explores societal problems, drawing upon the work of other researchers and on three studies of high-poverty neighborhoods in Chicago.

Chapter I opens with inner-city residents describing their worries about their neighborhoods, their futures and their families. "It's just awful the way, throughout the city, on your South and West side, you see all these vacant lots, all these abandoned buildings, and peoples are living in the streets," says one woman, with "… four and five and ten peoples in an apartment that was allocated for one or two peoples …". Another mother complains that children can't learn in junior high schools "infested with overcrowded-ness, gang activities, high pregnancy rates …". Another woman recalls sending her nine-year-old son out of town after he was threatened at gunpoint because he would not join a gang.

Unfortunately, problems such as social deterioration, violence, poor public schools, illegal drug trade and usage and lack of housing are growing. According to the census, the number of "ghetto" neighborhoods and the concentration of poverty—in particular, for racial minorities—has increased. "There is no doubt," writes Wilson, "that the disproportionate concentration of poverty among African-Americans is one of the legacies of historic racial segregation."

Wilson reports a correlation between violent crime and joblessness. Poor neighborhoods in which most residents work have fewer problems than neighborhoods in which the unemployment rate is higher. For the working poor, shared obligations and expectations, and social networks with neighbors, help parents raise their children. However, in neighborhoods with high unemployment rates, children grow up without fully understanding how the labor force relates to their lives. They learn behaviors that are helpful to survival on the streets, but are not conducive to positive outcomes.

As one man explains: "The males, they're pretty impressionable. That's why they drop out ... They see their peers out here, they didn't go to school, they makin' it. But they makin' it the wrong way." A college student elaborates: "And I think about, how, you know, the kids around here … they see these drug addicts, and then what else do they see? …Who do they really look, model themselves after?"

According to Wilson, the growing joblessness rate is related to the decline of the manufacturing industry and the growing wage gap between blue-collar and white-collar workers. As factories left the cities, so too did smaller businesses. Residents who could afford to do so moved to the suburbs in order to overcome the "spatial mismatch" of residential neighborhoods and jobs. Inner-city blacks often do not have the opportunity to develop the "hard skills" (literacy, numeracy, mechanical skills learned in school) and "soft skills" (social skills tied to culture) that employers in technology and service fields desire.

Employers reject inner-city blacks based on "statistical discrimination" —general assumptions they make that poor people will not work hard. One employer states, "I see a tremendous amount of difference in the work ethics of individuals who come out of different income groups ... and there are many, many, many more black persons that come out of [low income groups]."

Wilson also suggests that unstable work and low incomes harm adults' sense of self-efficacy, leading to depression and hindering their parenting abilities. One discouraged mother says: "Sometimes you can try and then you say 'I'm tired of trying.' ...You try so hard it seems as if when you just about to get up, something happen to knock you back down and you just forget it, then."

Wilson offers an array of solutions to combat the problems of joblessness and inner-city poverty. These policies are designed to benefit all segments of society, not just the truly disadvantaged.

• National performance standards in public schools, an emphasis on high-order thinking skills and teacher development.
• Equitable school funding across localities.
• Computer-competency training in all public schools with the assistance of community organizations (corporations, civic clubs, churches).
• Public school choice through vouchers, and readily available information on school performance.
• Universal preschool to enhance school readiness, child support assurance, and parental leave programs.
• School-to-work transition programs to connect school achievement to job skills and get high-school students on a career track by graduation.
• City-suburban cooperation and integration (e.g., tax-base sharing, metropolitan government creation, collaborative metropolitan planning, regional authorities to attack problems that communities fail to solve).
• Restoration of federal contributions to city budgets.
• Further expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) with benefits paid on a monthly basis.
• Universal health care.
• Subsidized car-pool and van-pool networks; for-profit and nonprofit job preparation, information and placement centers in the inner city to increase work opportunities for inner-city residents.

Additionally, Wilson outlines several options for providing public sector employment. For the basis of his suggestions, he credits Mickey Kaus of the New Republic, who recommended a program similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. This program would make public jobs available at 10 to 15 percent below the minimum wage to anyone over age 18 who wanted to work. In addition to increasing the number of jobs available, it would provide an opportunity to repair deteriorating city infrastructures.

Although many of the policies Wilson recommends seem to benefit adults over children, and although joblessness may not seem to be an issue for children, the opposite is in fact true. Children cannot choose their environments, and rely on adults for their well-being. Wilson's primary concern is for children: He concludes his book by writing that the most important contribution of his policy recommendations would be "their effect on the children of the ghetto, who would be able to anticipate a future of economic mobility and share the hopes and aspirations that so many of their fellow citizens experience as part of the American way of life."

Sharon Vandivere is a research assistant at Child Trends, Inc., in Washington, D.C., working on projects involving indicators of children's well-being and on the effects of welfare reform and devolution. She is also a part-time graduate student at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.