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The article offers various explanations as to why poor in the U.S. pay more. One aspect of the literature on the plight of the low-income consumer has to do with the market for consumer durables and credit. Several authors have performed empirical analyses of the consumer durable market. Previous studies have formulated the hypothesis that if the merchant charges a higher total price to a nonwhite shopper than that charged a white shopper for an identical item, the authors of those studies assert that racial preferences account for the merchant's behavior. To test this hypothesis, the authors carefully selected four couples, two black and two white. The experiment design consisted of shopping trips by couples for a specified television set. The article authors conclude that the first thing that researchers and policymakers must insure, when dealing with the problems of poverty, is that they do no harm. To insure against doing harm requires dispassionate analysis that avoids the mere characterization of behavior.

The article analyzes the dynamics of access among the welfare poor. Participation in political society is often considered from the perspective of the theory of democratic pluralism. This theory, which, in the 1960's, inspired a lively debate between those who found decisions controlled by monolithic elites and those who found multiple points of decision-making, has increasingly seen the empirical grounds of contention moving toward questions of participation and access to decision-making processes by non-elites. Access has been studied by analyzing the resources of individuals, the experience of new participants, the potential for manifestation of "quasi-groups," the effectiveness of group organization, and the response of competing groups, elites, and the public to the access-seeker. To comprehend the two-sided process of access-seeking, one must examine the forces that grant or block access as well as the parties that seek access. The central problem to which the empirical study of this paper is directed is the question of how difficult it is for a newly-formed group to gain a foothold in a presumably pluralistic structure of power.

This article presents a study, which focuses on poor Mexican American family. The Mexican American, then, like any other member of society, not only engages in what a scholar calls "judgmental work," but in doing so constantly relies upon the background knowledge of commonplace settings which he presumes he shares with others. That is, the Mexican American in managing his everyday affairs presumably does not comply with preestablished and legitimate alternative courses of action as spelled out by the dominant culture's normative abstract explanations of human behavior as described in most sociological theory. Rather, he tends to rely upon commonsense understandings of social structures about which people have little knowledge, and not upon the idealized norms that have been attributed to his failure or social status in the larger society by social scientists. True, the idealized norms of the social order form part of his background knowledge, but they do not fully explain how he goes about interpreting the norms to make sense of the many situations the Mexican American finds himself in and which may not have anything to do with his cultural heritage.

The article focuses on the status of low income consumers in relation to the issue of exploitation. The authors remark that allegations that low income consumers are exploited by chain supermarkets have resulted in numerous efforts to measure the prices of food in different income areas. This article reports the results of a study in which the prices of 20 food products were observed in all major chain supermarkets in Philadelphia and evaluations of store appearance and physical conditions were made. The findings of this study differ from those which have been reported previously and are of interest both because the market basket represents a substantial portion of the food budget of urban low income families and because the data were obtained by a complete census of major chain stores in a large city. Furthermore, the results are derived from a census of supermarkets, so that store sampling error is eliminated. The effect of interviewer bias, was minimized by assigning each interviewer to stores belonging to various chains, located in all income areas.

This article focuses on a traditional way of resolving problems in the United States which has been through the development of local self-improvement associations. In spite of the fact that the above characteristics of the poor suggest that they would not participate effectively in voluntarily associations, many intervention programs reflect the belief that self-help associations constitute an important, if not an indispensable, ingredient for breaking the poverty culture. Organizing the poor on their own behalf can be attempted either in conjunction with the prevailing social order, as in the community action programs sponsored by the Office of Economic Opportunity, or in opposition to the prevailing order, as in programs associated with Saul Alinsky or the new student left. Organizing the poor in opposition to the prevailing so that order does not elicit support from established social institutions, but may provide the drama and the emotional appeal that will motivate participation by a substantial segment of the poor population. On the other hand, organizing within the framework of the existing social order may produce strong institutional support, but it limits the targets and tactics of organizational strategy.

The article presents information about optimal taxes in maintenance plans (IM) in the U.S. Recently a number of IM experiments were launched to study the possible impact on the working poor of various IM plans. The IM approach to welfare and poverty is more comprehensive than either unemployment insurance or Aid for Families with Dependent Children. IM extends support to families with male heads as well as to female-headed families--to persons earning low wages as well as to high-wage earners who become temporarily unemployed and consequently suffer an income deficit. Each program also employs a tax rate which is the proportion by which the maximum transfer payment is reduced as a consequence of earned income and other receipts, generally fully or partially deducted from the maximum allowable transfer, adjusted for family size. The offset tax is the instrument whereby money is being retrieved from those who no longer need full support, presumably for reallocation to other eligible poor.

The article reports on a study which largely replicates the earlier study related to the discrimination in market against low-income group consumers, by testing the methodology in a different city. The primary focus of this study was to determine whether price and credit differentials existed between Anglo, middle-income and predominantly black, low-income sections of Portland, Oregon, and if such differentials did exist to determine whether they were a function of economic status or race. By including not only low-income but also middle-income shoppers of the two races, a built-in control was provided to magnify the relative importance of economic and racial status. If the low-income shoppers received similar cash and credit terms as those offered the middle-income shoppers, no brief could be made for exploitation. If the low-income couples received adverse terms, price discrimination could be said to be a function of income. Finally, if the low and middle-income blacks received higher prices than those quoted the white shoppers, then market exploitation would be said to be racially derived.

The article focuses on the multifamily housing solution and housing type preferences in the U.S. In the early years of public housing, many of the buildings were of low and moderate density. They were typically located on sites which also included gardens, areas for recreation and even in some cases, areas of untouched timber. In terms of both land use and building materials it is generally less expensive to construct higher density multifamily structures than those of moderate density or single-family detached houses of the same quality. While high density housing may appear to be a sound approach to meeting the needs of low-income families, many housing projects have been greeted with something less than enthusiasm by a number of architects, planners, social scientists and even many of the people for whom they were constructed. Numerous explanations have been suggested for the failure of many of these housing projects. Criticisms of physical design range from broad concern with the lack of beauty and monotony of external appearance to detailed discussion of such things as inadequate illumination of landings and stairwells and poor sound proofing.

The article focuses on the cultural and situational factors influencing the medical behavior of poor in the U.S. The authors remarks that more recently, interest has been directed both at the description of health and poverty and toward an understanding of the social and cultural causes of medical pathology among the poor. One major study for example focused upon underutilization and its relationship to social isolation and withdrawal. Underutilization becomes the direct result of the culture and values of the poor and presumably little or nothing can be done to improve health conditions for the poor without a change in these values. The policy implications of this interpretation of the medical behavior of the poor are clear. Short of full participation and integration into American life, policy guidelines would stress the importance of education in reducing the cultural impenetrability of the ghetto. The primary symptom to be cured in the pattern of underutilization of health care by the poor is alienation, the principal agent for the cure is education of the individual.

This article focuses on the need of tribal leadership in the programs for eradication of poverty in the U.S. The article also argues that such behavior was not at all inconsistent with the conditions of "pre-program" reservation leadership or the formal requirements of the leaders' participation in the programs, and that therefore such behavior could have been predicted. Specifically, the leadership behavior is placed within a context of three interrelated causal factors. The first is the persistence of a heritage of authority struggles at two levels: between the council as a unit and the non-tribal administration; and among individual council members themselves. The second is the persistence of a tendency for several formal leadership statuses simultaneously to be vested in a single individual. The third factor is `the dual nature of the leaders' involvement in the development effort. They were at once program administrators, ideally impartial, and recipients of lucrative program benefits. Given `the presence of these factors, it is argued, the leaders' behavior can be viewed as a rational effort to maximize the political and material potential of the programs for their personal satisfaction.

This article focuses on the trade-off strategy in community research. Most recently, some of the more sophisticated and highly organized low-income communities have developed a modus operandi with outside researchers. It is rooted in the very capitalistic system in which both the poor and the professional live. The human service professions have not been unresponsive to this emerging characteristic of low-income communities. Professional service programs involving low-income people as assistants to professionals and as links between the professional service and the recipients of these services are rapidly being developed. Traditionally, the researcher's approach to the community process has been objective, detached, silent-striving for invisibility. The researcher's model of work has been based on at least the following two values: maximizing the gathering of relevant data and minimizing the contamination of the processes being observed. The immediate objective of this strategy is to set up a symbiotic relationship between the two parties--researchers and the low-income community--which will result in mutual gain.

The article presents the comment of the author on one of his papers related to poverty, minorities, and consumer exploitation. In the summer of 1965, the Watts riot happened. Along with many other residents of Los Angeles, California, the author was unable to get to his place of employment because of roadblocks established by the police and National Guard to contain the destruction. This "vacation" period provided a time for reflection about the nature and problems of the society. One of the easiest observations to be made was that business, ranging from the burned-out mom-and-pop store in Watts to the giant corporation, could not remain aloof from the growing urban crisis. It seemed likely, however, that the commentators and analysts would focus largely on the educational and social roots of the problem and ignore the role of the business community. This oversight would only perpetuate a situation that caused Charles Lazarus, a vice-president of Federated Department Stores, later to ask how it was possible that a whole generation of corporate executives could drive their Cadillacs through the slums of America and not know that someday these ghetto-poor would rise to threaten both the corporate balance sheet and the whole fabric of American life.

This article reports on some preliminary results of the first national evaluation of the Community Action Program in the U.S. Thus, theoretical basis of the Community Action Program is the proposition that poverty in an affluent society is neither lack of individual economic resources nor "relative deprivation," but the lack of control by poor people over the institutions which serve them. The theory holds that this power vacuum has come about in a wide variety of ways--the increasing scale of society, the elimination of ethnic politics and/or urban political bosses, the concentration of the poor black population in the northern urban ghettoes--but the critical fact is that all of these processes together are producing increasing detachment of the poor population and thus strengthening the cycle of poverty. To break the cycle both power itself and self-awareness of power are necessary. The implication of this theoretical perspective is that intervention into this process must take one of two courses. Either the poor must attain political power so that they can influence the institutions affecting them or the institutions themselves must be changed so that they are more responsive to the needs and demands of the poor.

The article discusses the concept of subculture. When a segment of the population of a society is said to adhere to a subculture, this generally means that the people in that segment have been observed to share a distinctive pattern of values, beliefs and behaviors, and to exhibit a style of life which differs significantly from the dominant culture and other subcultures. It further means that the characteristics of the subcultural style of life are perpetuated by socialization, and are passed on from generation to generation. Social scientists have found the concept subculture theoretically productive and challenging, and have extended the label to apply to the cultural life of such diverse aggregates as delinquents, suburbanites, inmates, blue-color workers, hippies, the poor, and drug users. The process of discovering a subculture, and the implications of that process for the discoverer and the discovered, are promising matter for the sociology of knowledge. The social scientist perceives some collective, consensual and perpetuating (or perpetuated) social patterning within his candidate group, and if his criteria are met, he speaks of a subculture.

The purpose of the article is to examine the scope of the U.S. welfare attitudes, the apparent stereotypical character of such attitudes, and their reasons for being. To explore these issues a survey of a representative sample of 1017 Americans was conducted in all sections of the country in the spring of 1969, focusing on views of the poor and welfare. The response percentages considered to be anti-welfare are in bold face type. In every case but one a plurality of these Americans took a negative position vis-a-vis those on welfare programs. On four of the seven statements, a majority took an unequivocal anti-welfare position, and at least four out of ten were anti-welfare in their responses to the other three items. In only one case, the mobility item, was the proportion willing to express uncertainty a sizeable minority. Most people on welfare who can work do not try to find jobs so they can support themselves. This criticism of the work attitudes of those on welfare is often tied to the issue of employability. The 1969 survey dropped the "not" out of the statement and asked respondents if they agreed with the sentence "Most people on welfare who can work try to find jobs so they can support themselves." More disagreed with this view of welfare recipients than agreed.

The article examines the proposition that managerial expectations may significantly influence the adjustment and skill-development of disadvantaged workers in the industrial job role. This view of the requirements for changing underprivileged workers' habits, ambitions, and willingness to seek and assume responsibility may not be fully recognized by industrial relations practices in many firms. In order to motivate underprivileged workers to seek more responsibility on jobs, organizations must expect that disadvantaged workers are capable of more than has been realized. The underprivileged can be convinced not only by seeing personnel like themselves gaining responsible, secure jobs and opportunities for development, but also by feeling that this is to be expected. Despite many doubts and the speculative nature of knowledge on how to approach employment problems of the hard-core, managers need not allow these characteristics to be conveyed in concealed premises and expectations for the underprivileged worker's status and performance. A major implication of this study holds that searching for explanations of low-level goals and social status by observing the inner-directed motivations of underprivileged workers has limited value.

The article presents a discussion related to poverty, minorities and consumer exploitation. A number of reports, ranging from informal studies by journalists carefully researched investigations, have provided evidence that residents of ghettos pay more for their consumer goods than do other Americans. For example, social scientist David Caplovitz' study of 464 families living in three New York settlement houses revealed a consistent pattern of high prices, poor quality, high interest charges, and unethical merchandising techniques being inflicted on them. He concluded that the problems of low- income consumers stem from the same set of forces that have created that special system of sales-and-credit-the quasi-traditional economy catering to their wants. In California, the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots tended to reinforce this view. Following three months of investigation into the causes of the Watts riots, the Commission reported that consumer problems in the curfew area are not due to systematic racial discrimination but rather result from the traditional interplay of economic forces in the market place, aggravated by poverty conditions. These studies suggest, therefore, that the market system works to the disadvantage of the poor simply because they are poor, not because of their race or ethnicity.