Lawrence M. Mead

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State by Charles Murray. AEI Press, 140 pages, $20. In his 1984 book, Losing Ground, Charles Murray attacked the welfare system for tempting the poor into dysfunction. Since welfare supported families where the adults had children without marrying or . . . . Continue Reading »

The welfare reform that Congress passed last year ends unlimited federal aid to poor families and limits families to five years on the welfare rolls. Control of welfare is turned over largely to the states, but stiff new work rules require them to have most adult recipients working by 2002, while . . . . Continue Reading »

The Urban Underclassedited by christopher jencks and paul e. petersonbrookings institution publications, 490 pages, $34.95 Inner-City Poverty in the United Statesedited by lawrence e. lynn, jr. and michael h. mcgearynational academy press, 280 pages, $29.95 The presence of entrenched poverty and . . . . Continue Reading »

Most Americans have the sense that something went terribly wrong in the nation’s big cities sometime in the middle of the 1960s. Since then, urban areas have been perceived essentially as centers of social problems, even social pathologies. Urban affairs have become a continuing tale of rising . . . . Continue Reading »

The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare by michael b. katz pantheon books, 293 pages, $22.95  In The Undeserving Poor, there are two Michael Katzes on view, the historian and the social commentator, and the former is much the more persuasive. Katz, who teaches . . . . Continue Reading »