An edition of The new American reality (1996)

The new American reality

who we are, how we got here, where we are going

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 13, 2024 | History
An edition of The new American reality (1996)

The new American reality

who we are, how we got here, where we are going

The New American Reality presents a compelling portrait of today's America. Taking as his starting point the past four censuses, Farley offers a definitive analysis of life in the United States in the 1990s, a country strikingly different from what it was forty years ago.

The social trends that have so transformed the nation were kindled in the 1960s, a watershed decade for American civil rights. The New American Reality describes the activism, federal policies, and legal victories that eliminated overt racism and sexual discrimination.

But along with open doors came new challenges: divorce and out-of-wedlock births grew commonplace, increasing women's chances of falling into poverty; residential segregation, inadequate schooling, and a high ratio of female-headed families severely impaired the economic progress of African Americans; and a new wave of immigration rapidly altered the nation's ethnic composition. In the 1970s, global economic restructuring shifted the nation's dominant industry from manufacturing to services, and a new emphasis on technology and cost cutting created demand for more sophisticated skills in the workplace. The economic recovery of the 1980s offered little to remedy the stagnant and declining wages of the middle class, although the well educated and highly skilled fared well.

As a result, income inequality became a defining feature of economic life and a growing source of unease for many Americans.

The New American Reality also reports the good news about America; our lives are longer and healthier, the elderly are better off than ever before, consumer spending power has increased, and minorities and women have many more opportunities. In this way, The New American Reality challenges those who contend that we are a country in decline. The reality, Farley argues, is far more complex: we are a country in the midst of dramatic change, some of it negative but much of it positive.

Understanding that change - and making sense of the information we have about it - will be crucial to the economic and social vitality of America in the twenty-first century.

Publish Date
Pages
385

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 357-369) and index.

6

Published in
New York

Classifications

Library of Congress
HN58 .F37 1996

The Physical Object

Pagination
x, 385 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Number of pages
385

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL21578171M
Internet Archive
newamericanreali0000farl
ISBN 10
0871542374
LCCN
96020404
OCLC/WorldCat
34722090
Library Thing
1647022
Goodreads
1869513

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July 13, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
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