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This review has been accessed times since August 19, 2008

Glasmeier, Amy K. (2006). An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003. NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Pp. v + 97         ISBN 0-415-95335-9

Reviewed by Carlos Pérez
Chapman University

August 19, 2008

It is important to be cognizant of poverty and more attentive to the needs, conditions, and concerns of people living below the poverty line. This book, An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003, is essential reading for educators, and researchers, and others interested in conceptualizing the effects of poverty, especially since children are the most affected by it. According to UNICEF, children are disproportionately represented among the poor (UNICEF, 2000). Furthermore, UNICEF reports, internationally speaking, children represent at least half of the poor, approximately forty percent of all children in developing countries. In addition, worldwide, six hundred million children, eighteen years old and younger, survive on less than one dollar per day.

According to Gary Orfield of The Harvard Project on School Desegregation “statistics document dramatic relationships among poverty, race, and educational outcomes, forcing attention to issues that would not likely be considered without such information” (2001, p. 165). Orfield goes on to affirm “the addition of data and indicators about poverty and race to education statistics has substantially enriched ongoing debates about educational inequalities and possible solutions” (p. 165).

This attention to poverty may help public servants, such as teachers, or those in the private sector, for instance, researchers, to form a clearer understanding of people suffering from poverty, that is, those they possibly serve or conduct research with such demographic population. The emphasis of An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003, and of the expert organizations and researchers, is directed toward those who first and foremost face the consequences of poverty, who are the children, and those who care for them. The book is clear of its attentiveness to the vulnerability to poverty of children, women, and single mothers.

To take a case in point, the book enumerates children, women, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, the elderly, and the working poor as those most vulnerable to deep-seated, permanent poverty. So too, those living in certain geographical locations are more like to suffer the legacy of poverty, for instance, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, tribal lands or reservations, the border region, rural regions, and segregated urban centers. Again, teachers and researchers working with these populations would find this book invaluable.

Amy Glasmeier, the author of the book transfers the data in a common language format. Consequently, the seemingly overwhelming data on poverty in the United States, which is intensive, is compiled in less then one hundred pages. The data are compartmentalized proportionately, in digestible sections in a chronicle that is more like an armchair conversation than an accumulation of archives. It conveys, the vast data gathered from the census and other sources and displays them in a practical atlas resource.

The book could serve as a reference source on poverty in which the poor are presented as people who live the consequences of social segregation and economic stratification. The book sheds new light to the primary victims of poverty, which in turn, are the bearers, casualties, and sufferers of scarcity and underdevelopment. Once more, educators and researchers will benefit from gaining documented knowledge of the effects of poverty, like limited access to quality education, and other social services.

Moreover, the book does an excellent job of presenting ample data in meaningful accounts on poverty in a matter-of-fact recount. Although American society is among the richest of nations, yet its “citizens are the most economically insecure in the developed world” (Glasmeier, 2006, p. 1). I can see myself bring up highlights from this book in formal and informal conversations. As an educator, I see myself sharing with fellow teachers statistics that caught my attention relating to poverty and education. The acute effects of poverty on students may trigger a sense of urgency and purpose in contributing to helping our students in their educational trajectory which in turn may aid to academic and economic success. The author of the book asserts that “education is critical to getting out of poverty” (Glasmeier, 2006, p. 8).

The narrative text is reader-friendly with an intriguing combination of comprehensive text, color-coded charts, national and regional maps, and descriptive photographs. This book could be an excellent textbook for a relevant course, for instance, a social stratification course, at the college or university level. Although the narrative portions of the book are brief, yet they are dense with a wealth of data on the subject matter of poverty.

In conclusion, the book culminates with a section devoted to the ending tag of the title, which is poverty policy in the last seven and a half decades in the United States, culminating with the mid-2000s. These seven and a half decades could be characterized with swinging pendulums of reduced and increased unemployment, efforts to combat poverty, and amplification of socio-economic stratification, like the growth in the number of the nation’s working poor in the 1990s. In particular, it is interesting to note the implementation and development of Social Security in the 1930s and 1940s, recognition of the place-based nature of poverty in the 1950s, concerted efforts to address poverty through in-kind transfers in the mid-1960s to 1980s, and record level high of poverty rates in 2004.

This book was challenging to write a review, because it is a compilation of data, even though the content is fascinating. As the title suggests, it is an atlas of poverty, which translates to a synthesis of demographical and statistical data conveyed through maps, tables, and graphs. The book is organized well into nine major sections and twenty four identifiable sub-sections. Accordingly, it reminds us of the specific societal groups who are particularly vulnerable to poverty.

In contrast, the lived experiences of the wealthy in the United States are aloof from the changes in poverty levels, since the wealthy live in stark contrast with that of the nation’s less fortunate, reside among themselves, and have very high incomes compared with the population at large (Glasmeier, 2006, p. 28). I conclude with the principal purpose of learning more about poverty which is to confront the paradoxes of American society of being such a wealthy nation, yet having such large numbers of people living in poverty. Most importantly, those most vulnerable to the effects of poverty, especially children, and those who live and work with them are left with the dilemma of encountering the realities of poverty in America. Then, educators and researchers will be better equipped to make decisions, think critically, ask questions, and seek improvement for those they serve on a daily basis, whether as teachers, researchers, or concerned citizens for the less fortunate.

References

Orfield, G. (2001). Why data collection matters: The role of race and poverty indicators in American education. In Hutmacher, W., Cochrane, D., & Bottani, N. (Eds.). In the pursuit of equity in education: Using international indicators to compare equity policies. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

UNICEF. (2000). Poverty Reduction Begins with Children, Report. New York: UNICEF.

About the Reviewer

Carlos Pérez holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from Vanguard University of Southern California, and a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Since obtaining a teaching credential from California State University, Long Beach he has worked as an English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor to adult students in Los Angeles County and Orange County, California. He is a Ph.D. student at Chapman University.

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Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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