Concentrated urban poverty in the United States is addressed from a dual perspective. The first viewpoint is derived from the social science literature. To advance the existing base of knowledge, reference is made to a specific research program, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. This effort is currently in mid-course of a decade-long study of children from all major racial/ethnic, social class, and neighborhood groups in the city and is demonstrating the negative impacts on children's behavioral and social development of being raised in zones of concentrated poverty. The second perspective views urban poverty in the context of widening in come disparity and through the lens of the economic and social rights accorded to citizens of a democracy. Political leadership is urgently needed to challenge this level of disparity and to acknowledge concentrated urban poverty as an insidious violation of human rights, particularly those of African American children.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Blanc, Cristina.1994. Urban Children in Distress: Global Predicaments and Innovative Strategies. New York: Gordon Breach .
2.
Cervantes, Arturo.1996. Latinos in the U.S. and Chicago: The History, Demographics, and Prospects of a Growing Population. Chicago Project News2(3):1-4. Also availableathttp://phdcn.harvard.edu.
3.
Cervantes, Arturo, Louis Keith, and Grace Wychak.1999. Adverse Birth Outcomes Among Native-Born and Immigrant Women: Replicating National Evidence Regarding Mexicans at the Local Level. Maternal and Child Health Journal3:99-109.
4.
Commercial Club of Chicago. 1999. Chicago Metropolis 2020. Executive Summary.
5.
Earls, Felton.1991. Not Fear, nor Quarantine, but Science: Preparation for a Decade of Research to Advance Knowledge About the Control of Violence . Journal of Adolescent Health12:619-29.
6.
—. 1994. Connecting Social Science to the World: The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Harvard Medical School. Brochure. Also available at http://phdcn.harvard.edu.
7.
—. 1999. Frontiers of Research on Children, Youth and Families . Journal of Community Psychology27:517-24.
8.
Earls, Felton and Maya Carlson.1999. Children at the Margins of Society. In Homeless and Working Children Around the World: Exploring Developmental Issues, ed. M. Raffaeli and R. W. Larsen.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
9.
—. Forthcoming. Adolescents as Collaborators: In Search of Well-Being. In Youth in Cities, ed. Marta Tienda and William Julius Wilson.New York: Cambridge University Press.
10.
Hayes-Bautista, David, L. Beazconde-Garbanati, W.O. Schink, and M. Hayes-Bautista .1994. Latino Health in California, 1985-1990: Implications for Family Practice. Family Medicine9:556-62.
11.
Holton, John.1999. Notes from the Field. Chicago Project News5(1):1-5. Also available at http://phdccn.harvard.edu.
12.
Jarkowsky, Paul A.1997. Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation .
13.
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton .1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14.
Mendoza, Fernando.1994. The Health of Latino Children in the United States . Future of Children3:43-72.
15.
Morrison-Rodriguez, Barbara.1999. Twenty-Six Steps to Article 27: The Example of African-American Children in South Carolina. In Implementing the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Standard of Living Adequate for Development , ed. A. B. Andrews and N. H. Kaufman.Westport, CT: Praeger.
16.
Patillo-McCoy, Mary.1999. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
17.
Quillian, Lincoln.1999. Migration Patterns and the Growth of High Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970-1990. American Journal of Sociology105:1-37.
18.
Raudenbush, Stephen W. and Robert J. Sampson .1999. Ecometrics: Toward a Science of Assessing Ecological Settings with Application to the Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods. Sociological Methodology29:1-41.
19.
Rich-Edwards, J., S. Buka, R.T. Brennan, and F. Earls.Forthcoming. Diverging Associations of Maternal Age with Low Birth Weight for African-American and White Mothers. Harvard Medical School . American Journal of Public Health.
20.
Rosenbaum, J. and S. Popkin.1991. Black Pioneers: Do Their Moves to Suburbs Increase Economic Opportunity for Mothers and Children. Housing Policy Debate2:1179-1214.
21.
Sampson, Robert.1999. What Communities Supply. In Urban Social Problems and Community Development, ed. R. F. Ferguson and W T. Dickens.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
22.
Sampson, Robert, Jeffrey Morenoff, and Felton Earls.1999. Beyond Social Capital: Spatial Dynamics of Collective Efficacy for Children . American Sociological Review64:633-60.
23.
Sampson, Robert, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls.1997. Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy . Science277:918-24.
24.
Suttles, Gerald.1968. The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25.
Tonry, Michael, Lloyd Ohlin, and David Farrington.1991. Human Development and Criminal Behavior: New Ways of Advancing Knowledge. New York: Springer-Verlag.
26.
Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
27.
Wright, Richard.1945. Introduction. In Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton . New York: Harcourt, Brace .
