The long shadow : family background, disadvantaged urban youth, and the transition to adulthood / Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson.

Alexander, Karl L., author.
New York, New York : Russell Sage Foundation, [2014]
Added to CLICnet on 01/22/2015


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Part of the series American Sociological Association’s Rose series in sociology;Rose series in sociology.
Notes:

  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-255) and index.
  • The long shadow and urban disadvantage — The Baltimore backdrop — Family disadvantage — Neighborhood and school — Transitioning to adulthood — Socioeconomic destinations — Origins to destinations across generations — Stratification by race and gender — Life-course perspective of urban disadvantage.
  • West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential inner city gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual urban underclass depicted in television by shows like The Wire, the authors, all sociologists present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. This work focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportu

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