His suggestions include two components: (1) creating more effective labor market intermediaries to make it easier for inner-city residents to find good jobs and for metropolitan employers to find good inner city workers; (2) enhancing the inner city job skills, especially their "soft skills," through training programs that have closer ties to employers and incorporate subsidized employment experience. However, Bartik adds that given the magnitude of the poverty problem, any realistic policy to reduce inner city poverty through enhanced earnings will require tens of billions of dollars of annual government spending. Realistically, dollar amounts of this size for the inner city poor are unlikely to be provided by suburbs. Some might come from some the states, but most of funds must come from the federal government. "Projected surpluses suggest that such investments are feasible, if we have the political will," he concludes.
Elijah Anderson, a renowned ethnographer of the inner city and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, relates in an interview that when he wrote his PhD dissertation for the University of Chicago in the 1970s, the responsibilities and opportunities for the young black inner city male were completely different than they are today. Working people were able to make a decent living by working hard, even if they didn't have any special skills or education. Things have greatly changed since then (Laskowski)
Anderson argues that poor black males in the inner city are in trouble. The significant technological advances and a shift in economic opportunities, in addition to the outsourcing of many factory and industry jobs across the world have impacted black males the...
These changes pull jobs away from the inner city population and leave the poor with few options. "There are three prongs that make up the inner city economy today: low-paying service industry jobs, welfare payments and a shifting underground economy that involves hustling, begging and dealing," he says. Anderson feels this problem, which stems from poverty, demands national action. The government needs to provide more economic opportunity for inner city communities. "We need jobs, jobs, jobs and opportunity. We need the community to raise kids better - they are everyone's responsibility. It takes a village to raise a child, and we need to give our young people a sense of hope" (Laskowski)
Based on what these sociologists report, money, alone, will not resolve this deep-seeded problem of the lack of inner city employment. It has to be multi-faceted approach with ongoing structural changes to the underlying issues.
References
Bartik, Timothy. Jobs for the Poor: Can Labor Demand Policies Help? New York and Kalamazoo: Russell Sage Foundation and W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2001.
Chapple, Karen. Overcoming mismatch: beyond dispersal, mobility, and development strategies. Journal of the American Planning Association 72.3 (2006): 322-337.
Kusmer, Kenneth L. The Urban Crisis as History Reviews in American History 25.4 (1997) 667-673
Laskowski, Tara. "W.E.B. Lecture Shines Spotlight on Plight of Inner City Black Male.
15 February, 2006 Mason Gazette. 19 May, 2007. http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/7890/
Rubenstein, Ed. Right Data: welfare dependency and inner city jobs. National Review.
