Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto

The income of blacks in most northern industrial states today is lower relative to the income of whites than in 1949.Fusfeld and Bates examine the forces that have led to this state of affairs and find that these economic relationships are the product of a complex pattern of historical development and change in which black-white economic relation ships play a major part, along with pat terns of industrial, agricultural, and technological change and urban develop ment. They argue that today's urban racial ghettos are the result of the same forces that created modern Amer ica and that one of the by-products of American affluence is a ghettoized racial underclass. These two themes, they state, are es sential for an understanding of the prob lem and for the formulation of policy. Poverty is not simply the result of poor education, skills, and work habits but one outcome of the structure and func tioning of the economy. Solutions re quire more than policies that seek to change people: they await a recognition that basic economic relationships must be changed.Fusfeld, Daniel R. is the author of 'Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto', published 1984 under ISBN 9780809311576 and ISBN 0809311577.