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Comparisons of the extent of poverty at different times are greatly affected by whether the dividing line between the poor and the rest of the population changes as average income grows over time, and if so to what degree. The absolute income standard and the relative income standard are polar hypotheses about the income elasticity of the poverty line. Under an absolute standard of poverty, the poverty line is constant (in deflated dollars). In terms of what people thought of as poverty a century ago, the absolute standard implies that today almost no one is poor in the United States. Under a relative standard of poverty, the poverty line changes in the same proportion as average income if the relative income distribution is constant. The relative standard implies that if the shape of the income distribution is the same today as a century ago, the poverty problem is now no less. Probably more likely than either of these extremes is that people's judgment about the dividing line between poverty and a more adequate standard of living is determined by a mixture of concerns over both absolute- and relative conditions. If so, growth in average income increases the poverty line, but by less than in the same proportion. This proposition-that the income elasticity of the poverty line is between zero and one-is the hypothesis tested in this paper. (author abstract)

All Our Kin is the chronicle of a young white woman's sojourn into The Flats, an African-American ghetto community, to study the support system family and friends form when coping with poverty. Eschewing the traditional method of entry into the community used by anthropologists -- through authority figures and community leaders -- she approached the families herself by way of an acquaintance from school, becoming one of the first sociologists to explore the black kinship network from the inside. The result was a landmark study that debunked the misconception that poor families were unstable and disorganized. On the contrary, her study showed that families in The Flats adapted to their poverty conditions by forming large, resilient, lifelong support networks based on friendship and family that were very powerful, highly structured and surprisingly complex.

Universally considered the best analysis of family and kinship in a ghetto black community ever published, All Our Kin is also an indictment of a social system that reinforces welfare dependency and chronic unemployment. As today's political debate over welfare reform heats up, its message has become more important than ever. (author abstract)