Some of these children have now been followed for over twenty years, and the differences between the two groups have been astonishing. Far more children graduated from high school in the suburban group, ten times as many matriculated into four-year colleges, there were fewer college drop-outs and so forth. As these children now move into adulthood, similar differences are being found in employment history and earning capacity. While the road was sometimes bumpy and not everyone succeeded, a high percentage of these former ghetto kids were moving out. For them, the cycle of generational poverty had been broken.
There are several conditions in the study that should be noted. First, only one or two families were moved into any particular suburban neighborhood. This had a very important effect, especially on the adolescents from the inner city because it did not allow them to congregate and develop a sub-culture in the neighborhood or in the school that brought the ghetto problems along. Children were essentially
forced to integrate themselves into the suburban culture.
Second, neighbors did not know the history of the new family unless the new family chose to tell them. Neighbors were therefore allowed to form their own opinions of the newcomers without the prejudices that "the inner city" conjures.
Third, black families were integrated into white neighborhoods despite the mothers' sometimes considerable reluctance. (No one was
forced to take suburban housing, of course, but the very few who chose not to take it were dropped from the study and had to find their own housing.) Research has shown that the average African American would prefer to live in a neighborhood that is mixed about 50 - 50, and they become uncomfortable if the percentage of African Americans in the neighborhoods drops below 10%. Presumably, most of these families would have chosen to move into a middle-class black or integrated neighborhood,
34 but they were usually not given that choice.
These results must challenge those of us who blame primarily the individual or the family for the frequent failure in the inner city. Take the family out of the inner city, the Gautreaux Project strongly suggests, and the children will do well. The Gautreaux Project is now being replicated in a number of cities across the United States. A significant obstacle to multiplying such programs elsewhere is that the affluent communities have in some cases reacted very negatively to the idea, effectively killing the project.
Social Insurance
In the absence of real desegregation, the task of eliminating poverty will be very difficult. It is possible, however, to design a social insurance system in the United States that would bring most poor people out of poverty. The following is a proposal for American social insurance that, I think, would be accepted by the majority of Americans. Since it comprises only one new program that is favored in reliable polls by a large majority of Americans and an expansion of three currently existing programs, the proposal is politically feasible.
Footnotes
34 In all probability, the urban children would have done just as well (or perhaps better) in an affluent black neighborhood, but this has not been tested.
