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Underclass

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Underclass

The lowest level of the socioeconomic spectrum. The underclass may be intermittently employed but generally are thought to include long-term welfare recipients, drug and alcohol addicts, and petty criminals. They are distinguished from the working poor and the lower middle class.
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References in periodicals archive
Presumably, the best way to find out about levels of use and abuse in the underclass is to conduct surveys with representative samples of minority youth living in underclass neighborhoods and to compare them to white youth living in neighborhoods that are as nearly comparable as possible.
Those whose interests are served by masking the unwillingness of the society to pursue the redistributive policies necessary to deal with the underclass phenomenon often find aid and comfort among educators who have become frustrated by disappointing results from even the most carefully crafted and expertly implemented school improvement programs.
So, the Mizrahi have always been the underclass in Israel.
"The voice of the Underclass confronts the paradox of being an active cog in the very capitalist, commercial machine that controls them."
Most people in government and councils will extract the maximum expenses they can get away with, often their greed risking jail, and I would like to ask Iain Duncan Smith, scourge of the underclass, what first attracted him to his multi-millionaire wife?
For 40 years, centre left governments have relentlessly pursued 'progressive/modernising' policies in welfare, education and law and order and this has spawned a feckless, idle, wild, selfish, uneducated and criminal underclass, a group of whom are now terrorising the decent folk of the town.
It is a sad truth that the 60 deaths per annum that they claim will be avoided are likely to be of the poor and feckless underclass who, while doubtless being mourned by a few friends and family, would probably otherwise go unmissed in the greater scheme of things.
The so called 'underclass' he contemptuously refers to is nothing knew.
Globalization has created a multicultural underclass trapped within tight neighborhood pockets, and some educators question if limited language and experiences reinforce dysfunctional ways.
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