When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1996 by David Whitman

Yet Wilson's analysis is right, the problems of the inner city are going to get worse before they get better. As businesses and middle-class blacks continue to flee the ghetto, it will become that much meaner. Perhaps, a decade from now, if urban unrest and violent crime rise, a new president with a smaller budget deficit will enact a large public jobs program. Wilson is sanguine that inner-city neighborhoods can one day be turned around. In his post-reform world, adults would start to work, crime and drug use would subside, and the welfare rolls would shrink. Belatedly, the culture of the ghetto would abate.

There's good reason to think that a guaranteed jobs program would transform the lives of ghetto residents. As Kaus has put it, work works. Still, it may not work to restore every institution, especially the frayed families of inner-city blacks. On that score, one can only hope that Wilson's optimism about the government's capacity to strengthen families is right. Yes, jobs matter. But so do fathers.

David Whitman is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report.