Inner-city neighborhoods are where all these dynamics interact, the study points out, and in neighborhoods with poverty rates at or above 40 percent, higher rates of school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and crime, and lower rates on cognitive and verbal skill tests and health indicators among school-age children continue. In 2010, 19 percent of poor children who are black lived in high-poverty neighborhoods, as compared to 3 percent for whites.
The authors conclude that the problems faced by poor black children will not be solved by incremental approaches. What is needed are policies that provide pathways to self-sufficiency and equality.
“Moynihan’s call for an expansion of such things as youth employment opportunities, improvements in high-quality education programs, greater housing options, and a broadening of income supplements to combat inequality is as pertinent today as it was in 1965,” the authors say. The problems are still there, 50 years after Moynihan’s report, and as urgent now as ever.