Poverty 1

Question 1

In Massy and Eggers 1990 article concludes that what causes the concentration of black poverty between 1970 to 1980.

Answer 1

racial residential segregation and not class segregation

Question 2

The 1970s were a watershed moment, after __ years of steady growth, family income stopped increasing in 1973 and slowly fell over the next __ years. As a result, the long decline in poverty came to an abrupt halt, and family income inequality rose for the first time in the postwar era.

Answer 2

30, 11 (Massey & Eggers 1990)

Question 3

Wilson’s contains three basic elements. What are they?

Answer 3

1) poverty became more spatially concentrated in American cities during the 1970s, with pernicious effects; 2) this concentration was made possible by structural transformations that increased the prevalence of poverty among minorities; and 3) middle-class minority members increasingly removed themselves spatially from the poor.

Question 4

What is the core idea of Massey’s theory of racial segregation and poor neighborhood formation?

Answer 4

The core idea is simple: racial segregation separates high-poverty racial groups from low-poverty racial groups. The result of this separation is that poverty is concentrated in communities of high-poverty racial groups while low-poverty racial groups are shielded from poverty contact. By adding some degree of poverty-status segregation within race, poverty is further concentrated, producing high neighborhood poverty contact for the poor of high-poverty racial groups.

Question 5

What is Massey’s and Wilson’s disagreement about black middle-class out-migration?

Answer 5

It is linked to their debates about the role of segregation in neighborhood poverty concentration.

Question 6

How does Wilson describe how desegregation can increase poverty concentration?

Answer 6

If movement into white neighborhoods occurs primarily among middle-class blacks, leaving poorer blacks segregated by race and class.

Question 7

How does Massey describe how desegregation can decrease poverty concentration?

Answer 7

Massey describes desegregation as occurring equally over income levels, thus reducing poverty concentration by mixing lower-poverty racial groups (whites and Asians) with higher-poverty racial groups (blacks and Hispanics).

Question 8

For Wilson, what were the primary causes of poverty concentration?

Answer 8

The primary condition he emphasizes is the deindustrialization of urban cores and changes in the skill requirements of urban jobs, which produced spatial and skill mismatches of blue-collar inner-city workers with new urban economies based on services. The result was a surge in unemployment and poverty rates in working-class minority neighborhoods. Wilson also suggests that with declines in legalized segregation, middle-class blacks increasingly moved away from black neighborhoods and into white neighborhoods, leaving behind poorer blacks.

Question 9

How does Massey’s conceptual model spell out the invariant population process of concentrated poverty?

Answer 9

Segregation between groups with unequal poverty rates must concentrate poverty for the higher-poverty group regardless of the other characteristics of individuals or neighborhoods.

Question 10

In South & Crowder (1997), what social and demograhphic characteristics of individuals and their communities enable some people to escape poor NHs for better areas?

Answer 10

Education & marriage increase the likelihood of leaving poor tracts, while age, home ownership, residential segregation and receiving public assistance reduce it.

Question 11

Blacks are more susceptible to downward neighborhood mobility than whites. What are the disruptive life-course events that can lead to this downward mobility?

Answer 11

marital dissolution and unemployment (South & Crowder 1997)

Question 12

South & Crowder (1997) find what version of the place stratification theory applies to blacks leaving poor for non-poor tracts?

Answer 12

The “weak” version. It “costs” blacks less than white in educational attainment to leave poor for non poor tracts, but even the most educated blacks remain substantially less likely than the least educated whites to escape distressed neighborhoods.

Question 13

What do South & Crowder find the effect of residential integration is on blacks moving out of distressed neighborhoods?

Answer 13

It increases their likelihood of escaping.

Question 14

What effect does recently constructed housing have on the non-poor?

Answer 14

It helps to retain them in non-poor neighborhoods. (South & Crowder 1997)

Question 15

What do Massey, Gross, and Shibuya (1994) find concerning the causes of concentrated poverty?

Answer 15

They find little support for the view that the geographic concentration of black poverty is caused by the out-migration of nonpoor blacks or that it stems from the net movement of blacks into poverty. Rather, their results suggest that the geographic concentration of poor blacks is caused by the residential segregation of African-Americans in urban housing markets.

Question 16

What are the 3 causes of concentrated poverty for Massey, Gross, and Shibuya (1994)?

Answer 16

1 - net in-migration of poor blacks into poor NHs 2 - net downward socioeconomic mobility among blacks living in racially segregated NHs 3 - the exclusion of blacks from white NHs and from the strict aviodance of black NHs by white movers.

Question 17

Wilson (1987) argues that one of the key forces that led to the increase in the number of extremely poor neighbor- hoods was the movement of middle-class residents, especially middle-class African-American residents, from mixed-income neighborhoods to suburban, white neighborhoods. What evidence does he use to support this?

Answer 17

Wilson supports this conclusion by citing data on predominately African-American neighborhoods in Chicago that shows that from 1970 to 1980 the number of middle-class black families declined, but the absolute number of poor families remained roughly the same.

Question 18

According to the PSID (Quillian 1999) during the early 1980s recession, increases in the poverty rate among the non-poor were spatially concentrated where?

Answer 18

During the early 1980s recession, increases in the poverty rate among the non-poor were spatially concentrated in black moderately poor neighborhoods.

Question 19

There is __ _________ in the PSID data that stayers in black or poor neighborhoods experienced increases in their poverty rates in the 1970s and 1980s, except during the early 1980s recession.

Answer 19

no indication (Quillian 1999)

Question 20

Quillian (1999) finds that non-poor African-Americans are moving into white areas _____ _______, as Wilson suggests. But the numbers of nonpoor African-Americans in white and nonpoor areas have not _________ much over time, as Massey and Denton (1993) have shown, because of the _______ in white population in these neighborhoods.

Answer 20

fairly, rapidly/increased decline

Question 21

According to Quillian (1999) what happens to white populations as blacks move in?

Answer 21

White populations tend to drop as blacks move in, and they do so at a fast enough rate to keep the proportion of black families that do move into predominately white neighborhoods from increasing.

Question 22

For blacks what is the most difficult part of escaping a poor neighborhood?

Answer 22

not moving out but staying out (Quillian 2003)

Question 23

Massey & Fischer (2000) assert that a change in any of these 3 forces affects the distribution of people across socio-economic categories, or the spatial relation of people between them, will interact with racial or ethnic segregation so as to produce higher concentrations of poverty as residential segregation grows.

Answer 23

social, economic, or demographic change

Question 24

Most blacks will live in a poor neighborhood over a __ year span, contrasted to only __ percent of whites.

Answer 24

10, 10 (Quillian 2003)