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I. Definitions/Background

Downward Mobility is defined as “movement from one social level…to a lower one as by changing job or marrying” at dictionary.com. Downward mobility affects all nodes of ones life. Upward mobility is one of America’s social ideals; however, the exact opposite is reality for many Americans today. There are many ways that one can experience this type of mobility: through divorce, lack of education, loss of job, or changing jobs and therefore taking a pay cut. This affects not only the person directly experiencing this, but also their family and sometimes, even their friends are affected in some way. Katherine S. Newman was one of the first anthropologists to study the economic hardships of “normal”, middle-class Americans. In Newman’s book “Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence”, she interviewed many Americans from all different walks of life: business men that have lost their high paying job because of a merger, women that have been comfortably situated in a middle-upper class lifestyle that suddenly are presented with a divorce and fall into economic depression, and factory closings with workers that were once the backbone of a small town that now have nothing left because their factory life was all they knew. In David Zucchino’s “The Myth of the Welfare Queen”, he uncovers the allegory of women on welfare and discovers the hardships that challenge these women daily, by conducting research in North Philadelphia for about half a year. Nathan Glazer’s “The Limits of Social Policy” argues that while America’s social policy has in some ways really helped American families, other, equally important problems, are being ignored.

'''II. Divorce'''

Divorce is a major factor when it comes to women experiencing downward mobility. More women are ending up of welfare due to the lack of economic means to support themselves and their children. There has been a major rise in the amount of women being the head of household and having complete economic control.. Newman cites Richard Peterson’s research of 1996 where he found that “men experience a slight improvement in their standard of living following a divorce, while women sustain a 27 percent standard of living decline” (Newman 202). Women in the middle class are finding themselves in a worse situation than women in the lower class simply because their standard of living was higher than women of the lower class. Where women in the middle class once lived with the assurance of the ability of sending their children to college, the dreams are stripped from them. “According to a Census Bureau study in the early 90’s, 11.5 million single parents have custody of their children, though only 6.4 million have agreements in place for child support” (Newman 203). Women who return to the workforce after raising children, for example, are typically left with service jobs because of their lack of credentials and education. These types of jobs include waitressing and clerical jobs that usually offer women much economic freedom. “Despite recent improvement in America’s attitude toward working women, their wages are still comparatively low: In 1998, women still earned only 76 cents for every dollar earned by men” (Newman 203). Women also face more problems if they have small children, because despite all of the other economic challenges they are facing, they also need to search for childcare, which increases the cost of supporting a family. Legal reforms of the 1970’s, including the end of alimony and the rise of no-fault divorce also has made women’s lives harder, because they are left with a lack of economic means by which to raise their family. Typically men are “off the hook” so to speak when it comes to having to continue support of a wife and children.

'''III. Women on Welfare'''

Under the Nixon Presidential Administration, FAP, or the Family Assistance Program was proposed to replace welfare. This program was a “need-based, noncontributory maintenance income for the poor” (Glazer, 18). The program varied over the next few years, due to political criticism. While both Nixon and Ford were supposed to address its reform during their presidential stints, Ford was the first to do so. The Family Assistance Program was reformed, despite variation, during the presidential term of Jimmy Carter. Next, the PBJI, or the Program for Better Jobs and Income was proposed, but also failed. “The age of welfare reform was over: the primary interest of the Reagan administration was to cut federal costs and easier to get people removed, and to reduce benefits to those who did get on welfare (Glazner 18). This social reform was debated by those on the left as well as those on the right, however, in the end; the influence of economic analysis explained its downfall. During President Bill Clinton’s second term, on August 22, 1996, he signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act”, otherwise known as the welfare reform act. “The new law revoked the federal guarantee of welfare cash to low-income families with dependent children, ending sixty-one years of entitlement for the poorest of the poor” (Zucchino, 13). This threatened the millions of Americans that grew to depend on the guaranteed federal aid. For about 6 months, David Zucchino visited North Philadelphia in search of the “welfare queen”, America’s believed and contested welfare mom: “Cadillac-driving, champagne-sipping, penthouse living” (Zucchino, 13). He sought to find if there were such a group living in America, however found that this did not exist. The economics problems that women are faced with lend directly to the growing rise of women on welfare. Men are making more money than women, and typically are not the single parent that has to raise children. The service jobs available to women without a higher education as compared to men without such an education are lower paying and have less potential for economic growth and future economic independence. Welfare is a direct response to these problems. David Zucchino also found was that a lack of education was one of the main reasons for their lack of economic means: “few women that I found were in a position to find employment. They had little formal education and few job skills; they were skilled primarily at raising children (Zucchino 14). Women that have been economically abandoned by their ex-husbands who were low-income to start with find “wrenching dislocation” (Newman 204) when they are the only ones earning money in the household. This dislocation is due to the fact that not only are these women faced with the disheartening fact of their new economic stance, but left guilt ridden are a newly single mother losing a husband. “What I found [in North Philadelphia]…was a thriving subculture of destitute women, abandoned by their men and left to fend for themselves and their children, with welfare and food stamps their only dependable income” (Zucchino 14). He found that the “welfare queen” is a myth and that these mothers that depend on welfare for supporting their family are in desperate need for the continuation of this governmental support.

'''IV. Generational Differences/the Depression of the 1930’s/ The Feminist Movement'''

There are a number of generational differences when it comes to downward mobility. The “children of the Great Depression’s” economic history is ridden with affluence and poverty, because they could also be called “adults of affluence”. During their childhood in the Great Depression, America experienced one of the greatest economic downturns America has ever seen. A large majority of the population during this time were poverty-stricken. “Downward mobility reached right into the stable middle class and tool a devastating toll on much of the working class” (Newman 206). This downward mobility spread across America, and mostly affected those in lower-income groups. By enduring these painful experiences during their childhood, these adults “developed a keen appreciation for the difficulties of raising a family on too little money, insufficient and monotonous food, inadequate clothing, and the anxieties that these frustrations cause” (Newman 206). In the 1950’s, these women of the Depression began to get married and start their own household. They experienced a starkly contrasting lifestyle during this time. The country was experiencing great economic gains, and this was very obvious in their lifestyles of comfort and relief. While growing up, their fathers were struggling to earn a living to support his family, most of these women’s husbands were comfortable, riding on the back of the GI Bill, and typically had white collar jobs, like a dentist, lawyer or engineer. “Financial difficulties soon passed. Riding the wave of the postwar housing boom, inexpensive mortgage money exploding birth rates and the rising expectations of a whole generation of upwardly mobiles, Depression women ultimately laid claim to something their parents could only dream about: a suburban home” (Newman 207). If these women were later divorce-ridden, they were anything but prepared for being the breadwinner of the family because of their husband’s role as primary economic contestant. By interviewing the women of the Depression in comparison with the next generation, while these women had more education, few had finished college, and left them again with the hardship of child rearing without economic means. While both generations of women had experienced “roughly the same economic position during their married years-middle class wives with white-collar husbands- the trajectories that had brought them to this point were quite different” (Newman 209). For many of these women who were children of the “women of the Depression”, divorce was their initial experience of economic hardship because they had not experienced what their parents had gone through, and downward mobility was a thing of the past. Following the Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the feminist movement was in full bloom and challenged the traditional ways of life for women: domesticity for women was also a thing of the past. “Liberal politics and social concern” (Newman 210) were the main areas of anxiety for these women of the Feminist Era. Although many of these women initially followed the paths of their mothers, they were still very affected by these social movements that guaranteed change. Economic loss was a reality for women of both eras, “their household income fell to levels approximately one-third to one-half what they had been during their married years (Newman 210), although their views of their understanding of the experience were very dissimilar. For women of the Depression Era, the experience was filled with dread and concern, but since they had experienced this in the past, they were not strangers to bad times. “These women know how to budget, bargain hunt, and bake (Newman 211); however women of the Feminist Era did not have the experience of economic upheaval, and lacked the survival skills to improve their economic situation. Women of this time held an ideal that “found some positive value in the need to scale back on consumption” (Newman 213). Their experience of divorce and downward mobility was one of the main themes of this era, and necessitated a shift in lifestyles. “The difference in their ages, points in the child-rearing cycle, and prospects for reemployment and remarriage played an important role in the divergence between the two generations of women” (Newman 215).

V. References

Glazner, Nathan. 1988. “The Limits of Social Policy”. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Newman, Katherine .1999 (1998) “Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence”. Berkley: University of California Press. Zucchino, David. 1997. “Myth of the Welfare Queen: A Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist’s Portrait of Women on the Line”. New York: Scribner.