Underclass

The term underclass has an extensive history within the social sciences. The first scholar to popularize the term was Gunnar Myrdal in the 1960s, when using it to refer to a “class of unemployed, unemployables, and underemployed who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large and do not share in its life, its ambitions and its achievements.” While the concept of an underclass in the United States has transformed several times following Myrdal’s introduction of the term, the underclass typically refers to the class of people beneath the working class. According to Erik Olin Wright, the underclass consists of individuals who occupy the lowest position in the class hierarchy. He defines the underclass as a “category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system.”

Since the underclass typically resides within specific areas of a city, it has become a popular term in accounts of urban poverty. The Truly Disadvantaged, William Julius Wilson’s (1987) account of the black underclass, integrates the classic Chicago work on neighborhoods and current research on social disorganization, urban poverty, and social inequality. Wilson argues that joblessness and the concentration of poverty have substantially contributed to the employment problems that the underclass confront in urban areas. While cultural factors play a role in transmitting economic disadvantage within communities and across generations, Wilson argues that high rates of poverty within these environments came about because of the shift from goods-producing to service-producing industries, the relocation of manufacturing industries out of the central city, and wage stagnation.

By the early 1970s, the “golden age” sparked by post–World War II expansions had come to an end. In response, employers took a number [Page 1575]of steps. They restructured their operations by increasing their flexibility and relocating their operations abroad and to union-free regions of the United States. Employers also adopted compensation schemes that would enable them to reduce production costs. These changes in the labor process and the availability of employment opportunity had a profound effect on male workers, particularly those with few or minimal skills residing in urban areas. As a result, wages among low-skilled Caucasian men started to stagnate during the 1980s. Wages declined more rapidly during the 1990s, mostly because large segments of the white male workforce lost access to manufacturing jobs, and many were unable to find sufficient replacements in the expanding service sector.

African American male workers faced a similar fate. Although their period of wage gain during the 1970s lasted longer and produced more overall gains, the loss of well-paying low-skilled jobs was just as devastating to African American male workers as it was to their white male counterparts. For instance, in 1973, nearly 73 percent of African American male workers between the ages 20 to 24 had jobs. By 1988, this number dropped to 64 percent nationally, and declined much more sharply in industrialized Midwestern states where African Americans are heavily concentrated in manufacturing work, like Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. To make matters worse, the percentage of African American men ages 25 to 55 earning less than $10,000 increased from 25 to 40 percent between 1969 and 1984, according to Timothy Bates.

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