The State of Americans by Urie Bronfenbrenner; Peter McClelland; Elaine Wethington;Phyllis Moen; Stephen J. CeciReview by: Janice PetersonJournal of Economic Issues, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 863-865Published by: Association for Evolutionary EconomicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4227240 .

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Book Reviews 863

able teaching tool that provides a sense of context for the theoretical models, as well as offering a wider range of economic thought than is usually encountered in economics courses.

JENNIFER LONG

Keene State College

THE STATE OF AMERICANS. By Urie Bronfenbrenner, Peter McClelland, Elaine Wethington, Phyllis Moen, and Stephen J. Ceci. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Pp. 294. $25.00 (cloth).

In testimony before the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Repre- sentatives in 1969, Urie Bronfenbrenner argued that "the process of making human beings human is breaking down in American society." While he identified numer- ous causes of this breakdown, he argued that "they all converge in their disruptive impact on the one institution that bears primary responsibility for socialization in our society-the American family" [p. viii]. In 7he State of Americans, Bronfen- brenner and an interdisciplinary team of scholars revisit this concern about the cur- rent and future well-being of America's families and their children.

The goal of this ambitious volume is to clarify the nature of different social problems through cross-disciplinary analysis. It seeks to bring together economic and demographic data in a way that allows social problems to be analyzed in rela- tion to each other. Although the authors intentionally refrain from offering specific policy alternatives, they express hope that their work will communicate the "gravity of the crisis confronting the nation" and "will help spur and sustain a common ef- fort to alter our course toward increasing societal chaos" [p. x].

The State of Americans is structured around seven main chapters focusing on different sets of social problems and "disruptive trends." Each chapter consists of a series of graphs and figures, illustrating a wide variety of data on social and eco- nomic problems in a very clear and simple manner. The graphs and figures are ac- companied by brief statements highlighting key findings and by brief introductory and concluding statements.

Chapter 1 addresses the decline in moral values and behavior among today's youth, presenting findings on a variety of indicators such as "trust in others," voting behavior, cheating and tolerance toward cheating, religious attendance, crime, and drug use. Chapter 2 examines the issue of increasing youth violence and crime in more detail, presenting statistics on key indicators such as the rate of violent crime and homicide deaths, incarceration rates, and government expenditures for justice and corrections.

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864 Book Reviews

Chapter 3 shifts the focus to economic issues, specifically the declining ability of many families to achieve the "American dream." Economist David McClellend ar- gues that this phenomenon is rooted in the declining growth of productivity and na- tional output. He argues that this negative trend has led to declining real wages and has been accompanied by increasing income inequality, both contributing to a de- cline in upward mobility for families at the bottom of the income distribution. Sta- tistics on productivity, wages, family income, educational achievement, federal budget expenditures, and savings rates illustrate this chapter.

A common theme that emerges in these early chapters is the negative impact of changes in family structure, particularly the growth in single-parent families, on the well-being of children. This is the focus of Chapter 4, where a variety of statistics on single-parenthood, working parents, child care, teen-age childbearing, and pov- erty are presented. Chapter 5 continues the analysis of poverty, focusing on the up- ward trend in poverty among children. This chapter presents some very useful and disturbing information on the incidence and depth of poverty among different groups in society. Chapter 6 examines the relationship between family structure, family re- sources, and educational performance, and presents data on trends in test scores in a variety of circumstances. Chapter 7 addresses the changing age distribution and the social and economic implications of an aging population, presenting a variety of sta- tistics on the economic and health status of older Americans.

The State of Americans concludes that two sets of problems are at the core of contemporary American concerns. One set of problems is fundamentally economic and is reflected in declining growth rates, falling real wages, and rising inequality. These trends contribute to the increasing economic insecurity of American families and their children and a declining belief in the American dream. The second set of problems reflects a "decline in values," particularly among American youth, which both result from and contribute to the economic decline faced by many families.

The State of Americans makes a valiant effort to cover the numerous topics it sets out to address but falls short of its goals in some areas. In particular, the inter- relationships among problems stressed in the preface are often lost in the tremen- dous amount of detail presented on each topic. And while an important strength of the book is its presentation of information in an accessible manner, at times the analysis seems too simple, and the complexities inherent in many of these issues (such as single-parenthood) are obscured.

The authors purposely omit specific policy recommendations, arguing that to of- fer such recommendations would "serve as yet another stimulus to divisiveness" and thus divert attention from the critical problems at hand. While the book is certainly very comprehensive without a policy discussion, the choice not to include one is un- fortunate in many ways. Facts and figures seldom speak for themselves. They are interpreted in a particular ideological context and can be used to support very differ- ent positions. Many of the themes stressed in this book--such as the negative conse-

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Book Reviews 865

quences of single-parent families and the growth of an "underclass" lacking tradi- tional social values and norms-could be used to support a variety of vastly differ- ent policy agendas. The reader is left wondering what type of policy agenda the broad group of scholars who put this book together would propose and support.

The State of Americans has a great deal to offer anyone concerned with current social and economic issues. It is very accessible and would be appropriate for use in any undergraduate college course where "current issues" are addressed. It would be a useful teaching resource in numerous economics courses, providing data in a clear and simple format. The issues raised are critically important and deserve the atten- tion of a wide audience.

JANICE PETERSON State University of New York, College at Fredonia

COMMUNICATION BY DESIGN: THE POLITICS OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES. Edited by Robin Mansell and Roger Sil- verstone. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 278.

Communication by Design is a tightly integrated compilation of eight multidisci- plinary essays by six scholars, mostly from the University of Sussex, who explore relations between the design and use of information technologies (IT) on the one hand, and political, social, and economic change on the other. Referencing Harold Innis [p. 1], the authors presunme that IT is embedded in the very fabric of business and consumer cultures, and hence they ask whether IT "can be guided in ways that contribute to socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable goals" [p. 6].

Although the authors never attempt to answer that perplexing and important question (the term "environment," for instance, according to their index, does not even appear after page 4), the book nonetheless is an erudite and well-reasoned, al- beit incomplete, analysis of relations between innovations in IT and socioeconomic change. The authors leave for policymakers, however, the task of determining just what "improvements in the quality of our socio-economic and technically mediated lives" [p. 226] might mean.

According to the authors, innovation processes tend generally to be dialectical: agents and structures, for example, are seen as co-determining [p. 8]; social action, likewise, involves both the constitution and the communication of meaning [p. 58]; intended and unintended consequences of human action, furthermore, may be con- tradictory [p. 8]; media and information technologies, the authors declare, are "doubly articulated" (i.e., they are simultaneously of symbolic and functional sig- nificance) [p. 9]; technological change impacts differently on people according to social position [p. 36]; and so on.

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