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Katherine Newman
Millions of Americans work full time and year 'round but earn so little that they are still living below the poverty line. Even more families are "near poor," with incomes that put them above the magic line, but make them vulnerable to financial disaster. In No Shame in My Game, Chutes and Ladders, and The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, I find that the working poor share values and goals with many middle class Americans: they want their children to succeed where they have faltered; they want to live in safe, secure neighborhoods; they look to the work world as a place in which to find meaning, even in menial jobs. Yet the commonalities with the middle class end at the point where we consider the barriers they face. In periods of high growth, labor market opportunities open up and make it possible for the working poor to become upwardly mobile. But in bad times, the resistance of employers, the consequences of erratic ties to the labor market generated by family demands, and the difficulty of piling up more educational credentials come home to roost. Having devoted the better part of the past 20 years to studying inequality in the United States, in recent years I have shifted my attention overseas to similar problems in India, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, and Western Europe. Collaborative projects in these countries have enabled me to work on questions of labor market discrimination, occupational mobility among low educated youth, and patterns of delayed departure from the family home among those in their late 20s. As Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, I help make this kind of research feasible for students and faculty from all over the university. Visit WebsitePublications The Missing Class Beacon Press
Although the poverty rate in the U.S. is the highest in the industrial world, there is a much larger segment of the American population that virtually no one pays attention to: the near poor. Over fifty million Americans have surpassed the ranks of the "working poor," yet still struggle to maintain a decent standard of living. Through a series of profiles of families living on the financial edge, The Missing Class demonstrates the challenges the near poor face when it comes to housing, education, health care, and debt. 
Chutes and Ladders
Why do some low-wage earners in New York's ghettos find their way to upward mobility, while others suffer continued poverty, even though they are in the labor force? Relying on an eight year study of low wage workers who started out in the service sector in Harlem, Newman reveals how some of her subjects were able to capitalize on the economic prosperity of the late 1990s, often thanks to family, friends, and public subsidies; they went up the ladder, returning to school and obtaining trade certificates, high school diplomas, and even college degrees. Meanwhile, others, faced with family obligations, little or no training, and sheer prejudice, were not able to take advantage of these opportunities and moved downward. 
No Shame in My Game
Newman explodes the myth of America's unmotivated poor through this ethnographic study of workers at “Burger Barn,” inner city African Americans and Latinos who take minimum wage jobs and try to provide for themselves and their families on inadequate earnings. The dignity of work – even at low prestige and often oppressive jobs – emerges from an embrace of mainstream (rather than sub cultural) values. But values alone are not enough since the absence of health insurance, the high costs of continuing education, and uneven access to childcare undercut even the most determined efforts of working poor. 
A Different Shade of Grey 
Rampage 
Falling from Grace |
