The age of extremes: A revisionist perspective

Abstract

A t the conclusion of his provocative address, PAA president Douglas Massey (1996) explains the motivation for his candor and frankness. He hopes "to galvanize colleagues, students, politicians, and reporters into action," presumably into actions that will reverse the calamitous trends described in his jeremiad. But if we are to develop and implement programs to minimize poverty and provide equal opportunities, we must begin with a complete description of the social, demographic, and economic trends now reshaping this country and many others. Massey selectively emphasized one side of the story. That is appropriate as a call to arms, but it does not provide the information we need if we are to take action, once we are galvanized. Massey observes that economic inequality is growing throughout the world, that this inequality will increase in the future, and that because of urbanization, the rich and the poor will live in the same metropolises but will be separated. After the rich isolate themselves, they will provide for their own welfare and that of their children but will leave the poor to fend for themselves. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder will have fewer resources. Thus they will be concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, where a counterculture will develop-one that uses violent crime to acquire the goods that the economy fails to provide. Regarding the United States, Massey foresees growing residential segregation by economic class, persistent residential segregation by race, more crime, and presumably less social mobility as the gap between the prosperous and the poor widens. Massey presents evidence about some of these points, suggests interpretations of some not-so-clearly established trends, and then offers unrelentingly pessimistic speculations about the future. I agree with him in regard to two trends. First, economic inequality has increased in the United States in the last quarter-century. The oil price crisis of the early 1 970s demarcates a post-World War II era of rapid economic growth and moderately declining economic inequality from our present era of slower growth and increasing inequality (Danziger and Gottschalk 1995; Levy 1995). Second, in regard to the largest metropolises in 1990, census tract data reveal somewhat more geographic segregation of the impoverished population from the nonpoor than in the past. These changes merit our attention and may call for new policies, but Massey's address does not place them in an appropriate perspective.