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Index
Title Page
Copyright Page
A Note on Presentation
Preface
Introduction to the 2015 Edition
Prologue
1950
1968
1981
Part I: A Generous Revolution
1: The Kennedy Transition
1950–57: Last Years of the Traditional Consensus
1958–60: Strains in the Consensus
Modern Republicans and Lower-Case Liberals
“A Hand, Not a Handout”
2: “The System Is to Blame”
The Triumph of the Economy
The Discovery of Structural Poverty
The Civil Rights Movement Moves North
Hard Noses and Soft Data
3: Implementing the Elite Wisdom
An Elite Wisdom
The New Premises
The New Alms
The Reforms
Part II: Being Poor, Being Black: 1950–1980
4: Poverty
“Of Course Progress Stopped—The Economy Went Bad”
“Of Course Progress Stopped—Because of the Old People”
“Progress Didn’t Really Stop—Blacks Kept Gaining”
“Progress Didn’t Really Stop—The Poverty Measure Is Misleading”
The Most Damning Statistic: Latent Poverty
“It Would Have Been Worse Otherwise”
Summary of the Federal Effort
5: Employment
Jobs as the Magic Bullet
Black Unemployment Rates: A Peculiarly Localized Problem
Black Youth versus White Youth: Losing Ground
The Anomalous Plunge in Black Labor Force Participation
A Question of Generations
Escaping Stereotypes
6: Wages and Occupations
Occupational Gains
Income of Full-Time Workers
7: Education
The Federal Dollars
Quantity I: Enrollment in High School
Quantity II: College and Beyond
Quality: What Has Been Learned?
Looking Up: Progress Until the Mid-1960s
The State of Black Education by 1980
Educational Achievement: The Average High School Graduate
Educational Achievement: The College-Bound
8: Crime
Crime from 1950 to 1980: An Overview
The Criminals
The Victims
9: The Family
Choosing Measures
Illegitimate Births
“Female Householder, No Husband Present”
Family Composition and Poverty
10: The View from 1966
Part III: Interpreting the Data
11: The Social Scientists and the Great Experiment
The Social Scientists Go to Washington
The Negative Income Tax Experiment
12: Incentives to Fail I: Maximizing Short-Term Gains
Dramatis Personae
Options in 1960
Options in 1970
What About Work Incentives?
Timing of the Changes in Incentives
A Predictable Trendline
13: Incentives to Fail II: Crime and Education
Crime
Education
Misdirected Synergism
Present Sticks, and a Distant Carrot
14: The Destruction of Status Rewards
The Homogenization of the Poor
The Policy Implications of Homogenization
The Role of the Means-Tested Programs
Status and Upward Mobility
Part IV: Rethinking Social Policy
15: What Do We Want to Accomplish?
“Why Give Anything at All?”
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Transfers from Poor to Poor
The Net Happiness Challenge
16: The Constraints on Helping
A Thought Experiment
Laws of Social Programs
17: Choosing a Future
A Proposal for Social Policy and Race
A Proposal for Education
A Proposal for Public Welfare
The Ideal of Opportunity
Escapism
Appendix: The Data
Notes
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Glossary of Source Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
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