An exploration into America's political and philosophical engagements with poverty, focused primarily on poverty social policy since the 1960s.

The author explains how from the beginning there have been delineations between the "deserving" poor, like widows, the disabled or ill, or those who have undergone unfortunate circumstances in some other way, and the "undeserving" poor - those presumed to be poor because of some other reason, generally assumed to be their own indolence.

He explores the sociology of poverty, but primarily the public policy end of it - going in great detail about the policy decisions related to the War on Poverty and the conservative backlash to it, the emergence of the concept of the "underclass" and the end of that idea, and most recently, the appeal to a more market ideology in relation to handling poverty. Major philosophers and works are explored as well.

The author rightly speaks of the challenge behind the challenge: to understand what poverty is, where it comes from, and then to seek the best way forward in addressing it. Conservatives tend to focus on individual persons, as if poverty is generally the result of individual failure; liberals make much of places, as if poverty is a result of a toxic environment. He also identifies resources (poverty as lack of money and other assets), political economy (poverty as the unfortunate result of those who "lose" at capitalism), power (poverty as result of political powerlessness), and markets (poverty as lack of a viable market, or not using the market and human potential effectively). And there is also the pessimism - poverty as an ever-present problem, and thus one without solution.

More about the history of public policy than might be imagined, but still a good introduction to the state of poverty research and public policy, why it has gone the way it has, the stigmas and prejudices inherent throughout, and the reasons why those with power in America would rather not actually deal with the real issues behind poverty. ( )

Rest in peace, Michael B. Katz

The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation With Poverty, 2nd Edition by Michael B. Katz (Oxford University Press, $19.95).

When Michael B. Katz died last week at the age of 75, his major accomplishment was still in the process of being expanded upon. Nonetheless, this second edition of his masterwork, The Undeserving Poor, published with updates and revisions last November, remains as enlightening—and as challenging to the entrenched beliefs of more well-off Americans—as when the first edition was published in 1989.

Those of us who were around at the time remember well the phrase “welfare queen,” used by the “great communicator,” former President Ronald Reagan, as a refrain in his dismantling of the social safety net. To be fair, though, while the Reagan Revolution began the process of dismantling the War on Poverty programs of the 1960s, it was the welfare “reform” of former President Bill Clinton’s term that really put the screws to people who were already screwed by an economy, a society and a culture that provided them with nothing but dead ends.

The real accomplishment in Katz’s book is to debunk the myth of the “undeserving poor”; he directly engages and then disproves the still widely-held belief that poor people are poor because they have bad habits, low morals and are lazy.

Unfortunately, Katz’s actual data has proven no match for the unified media blasts from the right—after all, they’ve got FOXNews, talk radio, and the dark cellars of the ignorant Internet, where it’s both comforting and popular to insist that poor people are poor because they won’t work.

But Katz takes these strongly held—and unfounded—beliefs apart in his historical review of how we got to the “welfare queen” (and he does note that this trope contains, in addition to false beliefs about poverty, a racial component). He examines how our ideas about who “deserves” our assistance in their poverty—generally, widows and children, as well as the disabled and the elderly—mesh fairly precisely with who is actually poor: single mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly.

Of course, to a moralizing member of the far right, “widows” are very different from “single mothers,” in every way except in the outcomes for their children.

He details how poverty was seen as both a persistent and a common condition in pre-industrial America, and how the Industrial Revolution changed our attitudes about community responsibility for the poor. Once poverty became escapable, at least for those who had the opportunity for jobs (remember, these jobs were available mostly to white men), then the idea that the poor were poor because of laziness gained traction.

Further, there have been times since—notably, the Great Depression—when poverty was not quite as stigmatized; if a quarter of the country is out of work, it’s impossible to blame everyone’s poverty on poor character or bad decisions.

Katz’s history of how we came to despise the poor is a must-read for anyone concerned with the ongoing cuts to services for impoverished Americans. It provides the tools to understand why so many of our neighbors are unwilling to provide assistance to the less fortunate, even as they are only a paycheck away from needing similar assistance.

And it’s also a good reminder that we help the poor not because they deserve it or have earned it, but because they need it.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the late Professor Katz for his work.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )