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The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, by Katherine Newman, Victor Tan Chen
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Named one of the Best Business Books of 2007 by Library Journal
The Missing Class gives voice to the 54 million Americans, including 21 percent of the nation's children, who are sandwiched between poor and middle class. While government programs help the needy and politicians woo the more fortunate, the "Missing Class" is largely invisible and ignored. Through the experiences of nine families, Katherine Newman and Victor Tan Chen trace the unique problems faced by individuals in this large and growing demographic-the "near poor." The question for the Missing Class is not whether they're doing better than the truly poor-they are. The question is whether these individuals, on the razor's edge of subsistence, are safely ensconced in the Missing Class or in danger of losing it all. The Missing Class has much to tell us about whether the American dream still exists for those who are sacrificing daily to achieve it.
- Sales Rank: #218514 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Beacon Press
- Published on: 2008-09-01
- Released on: 2008-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.81" h x .78" w x 5.86" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
In this compassionate and clear-eyed analysis, sociologist Newman and journalist Chen posit that the middle class gains of the 1990s have been imperiled by the recent rollback of New Deal–style government aid. Millions of Americans climbed above the poverty line at the end of the 20th century, but since then, the risk of falling back has grown substantially. This policy-oriented collection of case studies addresses the plight of the 57 million near-poor, a largely overlooked missing class just out of reach of public assistance. Despite decent wages, the authors argue, the near-poor are saddled with various burdens that keep them hovering one disaster away from outright poverty and put their children at high risk of sliding down the economic ladder. Drawing on interviews conducted from 1995 to 2002 with families and public service professionals in the New York area, the authors chart in alternately uplifting and dismal detail the distinct perspectives of several low-income households. While they don't address those entering the missing class from above and perhaps too easily extrapolate from their conclusions, Newman and Chen contribute significantly to the dialogue on America's widening inequities. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
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. Fifty-seven million Americans live in this nether region, beyond the ranks of the "working poor," yet still struggling financially to maintain a decent standard of living. This is what the authors dub the "Missing Class." Through a series of profiles of families living on the financial edge, the authors demonstrate the challenges this group faces when it comes to housing, education, health care, and debt. Although this group has largely been left out of the rush to home ownership, these cash-starved households have proven to be cash cows for credit-card companies, whose biggest profits come from those who can only afford to make the minimum monthly payments. Too poor to enjoy the comforts of the middle-class and too wealthy to qualify for government assistance, the Missing Class is often trapped without a safety net. This revealing exposé gives voice to this growing segment of the population. Siegfried, David
Review
In this compassionate and clear-eyed analysis . . . Newman and Chen contribute significantly to the dialogue on America's widening inequities. —Publishers Weekly
"The Missing Class is a call to action to change America."—Senator John Edwards
"At last, a focus on people who struggle from month to month with housing, health care and education costs but don't fit into the government's comfortingly minimalist definition of poverty. Newman and Chen give us a vivid, close-up, and often moving look at the urban 'near poor.' An excellent follow-up to Newman's essential body of work on America's economic anxieties."—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
"Just above the artificial 'poverty line,' millions of hard-working people struggle invisibly to gain a foothold on the promise of the American Dream. Their raw hardships and persistent hopes, collected in this book of unflinching portraits, ought to sound the alarm for an America grown complacent."—David Shipler, author of The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A fair minded view of those we choose to ignore
By Jason Stokes
You see them every day. You deal with them at the doctor's office, the bookstore, and everyone else you go. They're those people that ensure that life runs smoothly for the rest of us - people working hard in not always that rewarding jobs, often in professional or nearly blue collar environments - they're the people who get things done. This book presents some of their stories in an engaging, interesting read that pulls no punches.
I appreciated the multiple stories of families living in these situations, through their triumphs, their heartbreak, and some challenges brought on by their own decisions. The authors don't make these people out to be perfect, nor do they demonize them. They simply tell the stories and let the reader draw their own conclusions. I appreciate that.
The book doesn't spout statistics, charts, or graphs - all of which can be effective - but it does provide a firsthand look at how these people live, struggle, and thrive. Too often do we focus on the rich (who are becoming richer) or the desperately poor, while ignoring the rest.
One story stood out to me - the woman working for low wages in a doctor's office, who had her job threatened by taking too many days off to care for her kids. I wonder how much those doctors make? I wonder if they could take a cut in pay to cover her health insurance? It's striking and maddening how the haves can so easily exclude the have nots.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
What does it cost to live?
By Janemb35
The shocking thing about this book is that it says that a family of 4 cannot make it on $30 to 40,000 a year. The individual stories are, alas, not new, but it provides a heartbreaking scenario of life in the minority lanes.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
human face to the economic underclass
By T. Cooper
This is a very welcome, topical book, on a segment of the American population which is quite sizable and is growing, but is often overlooked. The ongoing economic downturn has expanded the size of those who fall short of the middle class but who earn enough to avoid designation as being in poverty. It is this group which authors, Kathleen Newman, Yale sociologist, and Harvard grad student Victor Tan Chen call "the missing class". The authors track the challenges which those in the "missing class" face. These challenges are largely interrelated and make the point, made repeatedly in the book, that membership in the missing class is so insecure that all elements of it are vulnerable when one element of it is de-stabilized. This is one of the major points of the book.
The authors define the missing class as above the poverty-line but still economically uncertain enough that members are only a paycheck or two from being on the streets, and they are certainly not in the middle class. Such economic insecurity can bleed into all aspects of lives, from familial relations, to monetary planning, from child-care to marriage. The authors show that if one's job situation changes, key elements of a person's life are thrown into chaos quite easily.
The thesis of the book is that membership in the missing class is not a sustainable escape from poverty. Membership is tenuous and taxing and far from certain. The authors cite many examples in which being in the missing class does not significantly separate people from poverty. The authors make the point that work conditions for those in the missing class may provide entree into the white-collar world, but that the membership is usually on the bottom rung of this class and so such membership is far from secure. One of the things which makes the missing class problematic is that there is often a lot of reliance on family, who sometimes may be caught in poverty and may be unjustifiably demanding of the family member who has done a little better. If relationships within the extended family are troublesome, it can be more difficult to address some of the significant challenges of being in the missing class. Perhaps kids are not trusted with family and so they are given more unregulated freedom. The kids might make decisions and those decisions may be good or may not. They may create more challenges. The tenuousness of the job situation may also present challenges with regard to health care. Health care might be not be available on reasonable terms, or even at all, from their employer. This will necessitate undertaking other, perhaps more short-term expensive but still necessary, health care, which might in turn require cutbacks on other crucial expenses like credit cards. Skimping on this payment can of course unleash more unpleasant results from unsympathetic multi-national corporations. This is one instance in which the tenuousness of membership in the missing class can be very unsettling and problematic. These are the sorts of Hobson's Choices which characterize life for those in the missing class.
The authors tracked nine families who were in the missing class from the tough district of Washington Heights, an area of Manhattan. Washington Heights had suffered through its own struggles during its recent history, in which time it had suffered from a major escalation of gang problems bought on, at least in part, by changing migration patterns into the area, and of course partially by decreased local government funding and the neglect of government institutions with little interest in the well-being of the poor and ethnically diverse. However, once population patterns settled, it seemed that greater stability meant for a better living and labor environment. While not a complete departure from the conditions which had troubled the area, it was more able to support those working hard to advance. Newman and Tan Chen had clearly spent a great deal of time at intervals over the course of approximately ten years. Given sufficient financial support to track stability over this time, the authors are able to reach conclusions on the challenges and shortcomings of those whose lives they document. The judgments are not value judgments, but observations on the effect of living, economically speaking, on a knife's edge. The results are not totally unexpected. One should imagine that some will struggle, some will encounter terrible hardships not of their own making, and that some might make poor decisions in the wake of unprecedented wealth in their lives. The vast majority of the people who are featured in the book are immensely sympathetic characters for who one roots. Most of their decisions are good. The bad thing about being in the missing class, however, is that one bad decision can unleash a cascade of dreadful consequences, which consequences would not accrue to those in the upper or lower middle-class were they simply to make one bad decision. Most seem to be doing their utmost to grasp their piece of the American pie. If one is to exclude the barrier of legal immigration, they do it by the book also.
The people in the book are not giving others short shrift in order to secure their own piece of the pie and they sacrifice and work very hard, simply in order to drag themselves out of poverty. The very fact that the subjects of this book are not grasping even for membership in the upper middle-class but only in the "missing class" is something of a cutting indictment of the opportunity for advancement in the United States. It is a fascinating book and one which should prompt thought about what is sufficient money to live on and whether the American system is sufficiently sympathetic to the people who live under it.
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