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Data from the 1970 census show that black migrants to six of the nation's largest cities were less likely to be poor or on welfare in 1 970 than blacks born and raised in these cities. The cross-sectional pattern suggests that black migrants from the South may initially experience fairly high rates of poverty and welfare dependence, but after a few years tile Southern migrants are more successful in escaping from poverty and welfare dependence than blacks native to large cities in the North. Among whites in time six cities there is no consistent relationship between migration status and being poor and on welfare, except for slightly higher than average rates of poverty and receipt of welfare among the Southern born. These findings are placed in the context of previous research on differences between first-generation black Northerners and second-(and later) generation black Northerners. Sonic explanatory hypotheses are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the theory of pauperism. A student of economic conditions begins his article by regretfully confessing himself sadly ill-at-ease on the lonely heights of abstract economic doctrine may perhaps try to elucidate some of the general considerations surrounding the problems connected with pauperism, without being suspected of an unduly academic bias. Poor relief has been, with few exceptions, very little discussed by the economists who are professedly men of theory. The business of the Sociologist and of the Sociological Society is partly to advance knowledge by the collection of new facts, partly, and perhaps even more, to inform and organize it by the arrangement and criticism, by the testing and comparing with other times, of facts and theories which are already common property. The new facts are being supplied more quickly than one can assimilate them. A person who attributes pauperism to the inability to procure employment, will doubt the efficacy of the means which we propose to remedy it.