Alexander Polikoff
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest

Point of Contention: Poverty Deconcentration
For this issue’s Point of Contention, we asked four observers with substantial knowledge of the topic to answer this question—“Should the deconcentration of poverty become one of the core objectives of federal housing policy?” Please contact alastair.w.mcfarlane@hud.gov to suggest other thought-provoking areas of controversy.

Society has long thought about poverty, at least since Charles Dickens indelibly pictured Oliver Twist’s searing experiences. Focused thinking about “concentrated poverty,” however, did not really begin until the 1987 publication of William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, which “revolutionized stratification research” (Clampet-Lundquist and Massey, 2008). In the ensuing years, we have learned much about the effects of concentrated poverty, especially on young children. That learning should inform our response to the present point of contention.