Poverty Patterns For Black Men and Women

Abstract

term of became prevalent in 1978-1979 following the publication of an article with that title by Diana Pearce (Pearce, 1978). In her article, Pearce pointed to the rapid increase in the number of children and women living below the official federal poverty level. Many women's groups thought that the feminization of poverty had created the conditions for building a truly multiracial women's movement. The implication was that gender was somehow becoming a more important factor in determining poverty status, that men were no longer poor. Like drug abuse and teenage pregnancy, women's poverty attracted attention when it spread out of the inner city into the white suburbs. Yet the origins of the feminization of poverty were profoundly different for black women than for white women. The