Equal Opportunity and the Estranged Poor

Bibliographic Data

ID9760940
AuthorsJennifer Hochschild (0000-0001-5979-1562, Princeton University, corresponding author), Jennifer L Hochschild (Princeton University)
Year1989
Volume501
Issue1
Pages143-155
Publication date1989-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716289501001010
OpenAlexW2124890619
LanguageEN
Citations received5

This article is concerned with people who so lack marketable skills and material resources that they are excluded from mainstream society, and who lack faith that they can succeed through conventional means. They are usually poor, but they are a small subset of the poor and are not necessarily poor throughout their lives. Most are excluded because the American rhetoric of equal opportunity for all is belied by political choices that deny to some any chance of success. Programs to enable the estranged poor to enter mainstream society must provide skills, a starting place, and faith in the possibility of achievement. Such programs are long-lasting, intensive, and comprehensive—thus costly. To ensure that estrangement is not reproduced in the next generation, programs to aid the poor must, furthermore, eliminate gender biases in their prescriptions and must change the structural conditions that create the gap between the promise and practice of equal opportunity. These programs should not necessarily be targeted on minorities or the poor, but should build on Americans' support for social policies that give everyone a chance for at least some success

Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Epistemology · Equal opportunity · Faith · Law and economics · Mainstream · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rhetoric · Sociology · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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