Research on poverty in the United States tends to look at the large picture, using national databases to provide information for Federal policymakers. As a result, its conclusions generally argue that the poor are not much different from the rest of the population. They have less money, but their poverty status will usually not be permanent as their life circumstances change ( Sawhill, 1988; Levy and Murnane, 1992). While these statements may be true as a broad generalization, the experience of the inner cities suggests that the story in the ghettos is very different. Their inhabitants find it much harder to move out of poverty, their incomes.
