Colloquium Series: Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University

Coming of Age in the Other America

Recent research on inequality and poverty has shown that those born into low-income families, especially African Americans, still have difficulty entering the middle class, in part because of the disadvantages they experience living in more dangerous neighborhoods, going to inferior public schools, and persistent racial inequality. Despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologist Stefanie DeLuca, along with Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin found the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and showed how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage.