New Poverty Families in Postmodern Society

Subjects:

• Sociology » Social Work
• Sociology » Race Relations
• Sociology » Class Structure

Reviews:

• After characterizing modernizing theories of social change, Cheal concludes that postmodern disarray and despair best describe poverty and social security policies at the end of the 20th century. The most visible result of this disarray is that poor children are relatively worse off than at the century's beginning, despite a century of rhetoric about improving the lives of children....This informed study is built solidly on existing research and adds new statistical analysis of life-course gradients of poverty that usefully compares US and Canadian social security influences. It successfully demonstrates the relationships between shifting family situations and the risks of being poor. Readers cannot escape the force of its overall conclusions that welfare states have produced new forms of relative deprivation rather than social solidarity. A useful book for undergraduates and above.
  —Choice
• Overall, this book serves as a thoughtful analysis of a serious social ill. As a secondary text, it could prove useful in providing a historical grounding in poverty scholarship. It is clearly written and contains an adequate amount of charts and statistical information about the households and economies in the United States and Canada.
  —Families in Society
• David Cheal provides a coherent examination of one of the most important effects of crisis: the "postmodernization of poverty"....[A]n accessible examination of contemporary problems in social policy.
  —Review of Radical Political Economics
• David Cheal's book is a serious investigation of poverty, and, as such, rigorously specifies measures and elaborates their relative advantages and disadvantages. His writing is often technical although accessible even for a general reader....He writes with precision in regard to the empirical data and illustrates points with clear precision.
  —Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal

Table of Contents:

• Illustrations
• Preface
• Families in Postmodernity
• Poverty and Progress
• Sorting Out the Poor
• Marriage and its Aftermath
• The Birth of Poverty
• Family Work Systems
• Shallow Income Pools
• The Economic Life Course
• Shifting Entitlements
• The Postmodernization of Poverty
• Bibliography