Overview

Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled, the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them in the low-wage labor market. In this timely volume, Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest workers and families benefited from the tight labor markets and good economic times of the late 1990s. Following black and Latino workers in Harlem, who began their work lives flipping burgers, she finds more good news than we might have expected coming out of a high-poverty neighborhood. Many adult workers returned to school and obtained trade certificates, high school diplomas, and college degrees. Their persistence paid off in the form of better jobs, higher pay, and greater self-respect. Others found union jobs and, as a result, brought home bigger paychecks, health insurance, and a pension. More than 20 percent of those profiled in Chutes and Ladders are no longer poor. A very different story emerges among those who floundered even in a good economy. Weighed down by family obligations or troubled partners and hindered by poor training and prejudice, these ""low riders"" moved in and out of the labor market, on and off public assistance, and continued to depend upon the kindness of family and friends. Supplementing finely drawn ethnographic portraits, Newman examines the national picture to show that patterns around the country paralleled the findings from some of New York's most depressed neighborhoods. More than a story of the shifting fortunes of the labor market, Chutes and Ladders asks probing questions about the motivations of low-wage workers, the dreams they have for the future, and their understanding of the rules of the game.

Full Product Details

Author:   Katherine S. Newman
Publisher:   Harvard University Press
Imprint:   Harvard University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.70cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.445kg
ISBN:  

9780674027534

ISBN 10:   0674027531
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   01 April 2008
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Prologue 1. Lives, in the Long Run Part I. Chutes and Ladders 2. The Best-Case Scenario Katherine S. Newman and Chauncy Lennon 3. High Flyers, Low Riders, and the Up but Not Out Club 4. All in the Family 5. The National Picture Helen Connolly, Peter Gottschalk, and Katherine S. Newman Part II. The Inside View 6. Streetwise Economics Victor Tan Chen and Katherine S. Newman 7. This Is the Kind of Life I Want : Work and Welfare in the Boom Years 8. Dreams, Deferred: Aspirations and Obstacles in Work and Family Life 9. Opening the Gates Appendix A. Study Design Appendix B. Sample Definitions Appendix C. Occupational Prestige Scores and the Socioeconomic Index Appendix D. SIPP Analysis of Wage and Status Change Notes Index

Reviews

Newman is a patient and sympathetic reporter, and she asked her subjects deep questions about their work histories, their love lives, their politics and their dreams. A lot of what she heard from them will come as a surprise to anyone who has read much recent scholarship on the inner-city poor... Newman is not blind to the many disadvantages these former burger-flippers face in the marketplace, from outright racism to a lack of the casual social connections that middle-class Americans often use to find and land a job. The system really is sometimes rigged against these workers, and they know it. But despite all this, they speak persuasively and passionately about the way work, even rotten work, gives meaning to their lives. - Paul Tough, New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Katherine S. Newman is Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor, and Torrey Little Professor of Sociology, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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