Urban Underclass
No social science concept has generated more discussion and controversy in recent years than that of the urban underclass. Some argue that it is little more than a pithy and stigmatizing term for the poor people who have always existed in stratified societies (Gans 1990; Jencks 1989; Katz 1989; McGahey 1982). Others contend that the underclass is a distinct and recent phenomenon, reflecting extreme marginalization from mainstream economic institutions and aberrant behavior (drug abuse, violent crime, out-of-wedlock births), that reached catastrophic proportions in the inner cities by the early 1980s (Glasow 1980; Auletta 1982; Reischauer 1987; Nathan 1987; Wilson 1987, 1996). Among the multifaceted, subjective, and often ambiguous definitions of the urban underclass, most all include the notions of weak labor-force attachment and persistently low income ( Jencks and Peterson 1991; Sjoquist 1990). Indeed, the first scholar who introduced the term "underclass" in literature characterized its members as an emergent substratum of the permanently unemployed, the unemployable and the underemployed (Myrdal 1962).
Widely differing interpretations of the causes of the presence of an underclass have been offered, ranging from Marxist to social Darwinist. The most influential contemporary analysis of the urban underclass is Wilson's (1996) When Work Disappears.
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