STRUCTURAL FACTORS AFFECTING THE LOCATION AND TIMING OF URBAN UNDERCLASS GROWTH

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper examines the demographic and economic conditions underlying the differential rise of concentrated urban poverty in large northern cities. These cities are shown to have experienced substantially more occupational and industrial restructuring since 1970 than have major cities in the South and the West, particularly losses of jobs that had been held by less educated residents. Despite improvements in their overall schooling levels, relatively few inner-city blacks have acquired education beyond high school, in contrast with employees in new urban growth industries. Underclass blacks with exceptionally high rates of school dropout are especially handicapped in transforming city economies. Whereas the number of jobs not requiring education beyond high school has been increasing in the suburbs, less educated blacks have been spatially constrained to remain in inner-city housing. Within underclass neighborhoods, few households possess private vehicles, which are shown to be increasingly necessary for employment in dispersing metropolitan economies. The implications of interactions between skill mismatches and spatial mismatches are explored. Policies that may have inadvertently contributed to the rise of the urban underclass are discussed as are policies needed to reduce skill and spatial mismatches in metropolitan areas.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: