Underclass

FIRST COINED BY the European economist Gunnar Myrdal to acknowledge the increasing polarization of American society and the marginalization of poor people, the classification underclass has since been used in a pejorative or favorable fashion to describe a subset of the urban poor. From a cultural or behavioral perspective, the term refers to a group whose norms of conduct are at odds with mainstream values of work and personal responsibility. It is incorporated into a structural thesis to describe the chronically disadvantaged who are socially and physically isolated in areas of concentrated poverty and who lack the skills or opportunities to be gainfully employed.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, academics on both sides of the ideological spectrum embraced the term and attempted to substantiate their claims with some forceful arguments. These theoretical and conceptual distinctions echoed similar considerations from earlier decades. Efforts to distinguish between the deserving and nondeserving poor have had a long and varied history in the United States and elsewhere.

In Great Britain, the Poor Law enacted in 1601 allocated alms based on distinctions between those who were able but unwilling to work and the sick, aged, or very young who were considered to be victims of their circumstances. In the United States, recent welfare debates, which began in the 1960s, have centered on how to make the poor more accountable. These kinds of distinctions began to cloud discussions of the underclass following reference to the concept in a Time magazine article published in 1977.

On the left, W.J. Wilson made use of the term to highlight the growing disparity between the working middle class and the chronically jobless, urban minority groups who were being permanently excluded from thec [Page 1088]labor market because of inferior marketable skills or lack of work experience. C. Murray and others epitomized the arguments on the right by referring to the underclass in terms of cultural inadequacies and a predilection for idleness and deviance.

The academic community remained divided on its interpretation and application of the term and few empirical efforts were advanced on either side to operationalize it. Increasingly, the concept became so charged that academics in the United States began to shy away from using it altogether. However, it did not fall out of favor. Journalistic interpretations of neighborhood decline, civil unrest, or deviant behavior in urban areas were often laced with the term, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, one can find many accounts of the underclass in the popular press. The vast majority of these accounts take a decidedly negative bent and the term became a catchall phrase for nearly anyone who was poor and lived in the inner city.

Whether or not the term will reappear in academic discourse is debatable. The economic boom of the 1990s and the U.S. federal government's efforts to revamp the welfare system contributed to a reduction in the jobless rate in high-poverty neighborhoods. Should we witness significant erosion in these numbers and a concomitant decrease in the quality of life in many inner cities, it might reappear. Maybe this time it will become better defined and more easily interpretable.

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