In recent years, scholarly debate has centered on the size and sources of the underclass. This effort to chart trends in persistent poverty has obscured an observation undisputed both by those who believe and those who doubt that the underclass is growing. Poor people, even those living in entrenched poverty, are not all alike. Indeed, differences among the underclass may be as conspicuous and consequential as any commonalities. Yet the conditions creating dissimilarity among the disadvantaged have received comparatively little attention. My interest in these conditions grew out of a 20-year longitudinal ...