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...