Social Statistics and an American Urban Underclass: Improving the Knowledge Base for Social Policy in the 1990s

Abstract

Social statistics have played a large role in describing the nature of the problem of an emerging urban underclass in the United States and in placing these issues on the public agenda and before the research community. Extant social statistics, however, are inadequate to the task of understanding the processes and mechanisms that create, maintain, or overcome the conditions and consequences of the urban underclass. Without theoretically informed social statistics of organizations and institutions and of geographic and contextual detail, social statistics will be unable to inform public policy in the 1990s.

Key Words:

• Geography
• Institutions
• Neighborhood
• Organization
• Theory