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Embedding himself into Philadelphia's
inner city in search of the consequences of the 1996 welfare responsibility
act, Elijah Anderson, Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor
of the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, gives a
realistic, insider's view of inner-city life and economy.
In trying to contextualize welfare reform, Professor Anderson traces
America's shift from a manufacturing and service-based economy
to a workforce led by trained, high-tech labor. The resulting loss of low-paying
jobs, coupled with welfare reform, has essentially cut off money to
inner-city families.
To grasp a realistic view of the inner-city economy, says Professor
Anderson, you must "follow the money." The inner-city
economy "rests on three props: low wage jobs, welfare payments...,
and the idiosyncratic, irregular underground economy based on
drug dealing, street crime, bartering, begging, sharing, [and] exchange....
Cut off any one of these, and you put pressure on the other two...."
He continues, "Distress is visited on these communities by policies
made by people who often know nothing about them." |
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