The African-American Urban Milieu and Economic Development

Economic disparity between urban white America and urban black America is becoming more pronounced, whether in central cities, suburbs, or edge cities. African-American employment prospects have declined in central cities, increased slightly in suburbs, and increased substantially for the few African Americans living and working in edge cities. William Julius Wilson cites the decline in stable, higher-paying, blue-collar employment in the industrial cities throughout America. Others identify the changing structure of metropolitan employment as characterized by more rapid professional and white-collar employment growth in suburbs and edge cities and declining employment in central cities. In his book, Cities Without Suburbs, David Rusk argues that there is a distinction between the growth patterns of elastic and inelastic cities: elastic cities grow from within and are sufficiently flexible to transcend boundaries; inelastic cities experience declining demographic, economic, employment, and tax growth. Suburbs gain what the central cities lose. These trends are manifested in the stark disparities in income, wealth, and poverty between African Americans and other Americans and among urban African Americans. The rise of young, African-American, female-headed households, the burgeoning employment in edge cities, and the lower incomes of African Americans with college educations and professional training contribute collectively to trends in the economic status of African Americans. Beyond differences in income of urban African Americans, William O\u27Hare identified critical differences, particularly in urban areas, between African-American and overall American net worth

What Causes Obesity? And Why has it Grown so Much? An Alternative View

The purpose of this paper is to explain the main social and economic facts concerning obesity in a way that substantially improves upon existing economic theory. In contrast to existing theory, a number of recent health science writers have explained persuasively that weight gain or loss is not strictly determined by net calorie consumption. These writers have explained that what food people eat and the effect these foods have on hormones such as insulin and hormonal balance are the crucial factors. To understand the rising prevalence of obesity, it is necessary to take into account the growing infrastructure of obesity. This infrastructure includes food processing firms, notably their behavior relating to the qualities of processed food, their marketing of 'junk food' and fast food, and their food cost reducing technological changes. Another factor in rising obesity levels are the human capital resources of people, most notably their social capital, personal capital, and health capital. There is evidence that people who are poor in these intangible capacities are the ones with the highest rates of obesity. The essence of the theory is that obesity is the expected result when vulnerable people with low intangible capital resources encounter the many influences of the infrastructure of obesity. These people have gotten stuck in dysfunctional eating and exercise patterns which societal influences have unfortunately encouraged

\u3ci\u3eOn Linking Policy and Administration: A Minority Perspective\u3c/i\u3e

Editors: Laurence C. Howard, Lenneal J. Henderson and Daryl G. Hunt Chapter, Reaching Out Toward Representative Bureaucracy: Public Administration Training for Non-Traditional Students, co-authored by Dale Krane, UNO faculty member.https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/facultybooks/1210/thumbnail.jp