Urban Underclass Database, 1990

<p>The database is a panel design containing approximately 7,300 economic, social, demographic, and health indicators for the 100 largest metropolitan central cities and their underclass and poverty subareas. Items were selected from 32 sources; and most variable were drawn or computer from large, multiyear machine-readable files provided by the Bureau of Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Center for Health Statistics. Smaller, more specialized data files from other federal agencies (Eg. the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Center for Disease Control) and from scholarly reports were added to capture such factors as racial segregation, homelessness, and AIDS prevalence. Variables were chosen that are central to underclass research, that provide comparability of cities and city subareas across selected years between 1960 and 1990, and that are not typically available from published sources. The database brings together as a consolidated resource 27 files of interest to poverty researchers, urban policy analysts, city planners, and social scientists for investigating the changing state of America's largest cities and their disadvantaged residents.</p>