William Julius Wilson

Forty five years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty.” The idea has since been derided for describing the urban black family as caught in a “tangle of pathology.” But it never lost its appeal to conservative thinkers.

And with one in seven Americans living in poverty today, scholars are revisiting the idea.

Acclaimed sociologist William Julius Wilson creates a new framework for understanding the links between race and poverty in his new book More Than Just Race. Wilson tries to explain racial economic and social inequality by synthesizing the cultural and institutional factors that create it.