Another Look at The Truly Disadvantaged

In the aftermath of the controversy generated in 1965 by the Moynihan report on the black family, empirical research on inner-city poverty and other social dislocations ground to a halt. In the past few years, however, such research activity has revived as media reports and debates among academics have captured public interest in the growing problems of urban ghettos. Like the 1960s discussions of the causes and consequences of urban poverty that focused on the Moynihan report and on Oscar Lewis's work on the culture of poverty, much of the new discourse is contentious and acrimonious. My book, The TrulyDisadvantaged, has become a point of reference in this controversy and, as is too often true of controversies, a good deal of the discussion is based on inaccurate interpretations of the arguments set forth.1