The Urban Poverty and Family Life Study

The Urban Poverty and Family Life Study (UPFLS) was a research project designed to describe and understand the life experiences of Black, White, Mexican, Puerto Rican and non-Hispanic white families living in high-poverty neighborhoods in Chicago. The study comprised four parts: a large survey of inner-city residents; the Social Opportunity Survey, which focused on a smaller sample of respondents drawn from the main survey; ethnographic field research; and a survey of employers in the Greater Chicago area.

The main survey was fielded in 1987 and 1988, during which time interviews were conducted with 2,327 Black, White, Mexican- and Puerto Rican-origin parents from poor neighborhoods in Chicago. It also included a supplemental sample of 163 Black adults aged 18-44 who lived in the same areas but had no biological children. Major areas of investigation included household composition, family background, education, time spent in detention or jail, fertility, relationship history, current employment, employment history, military service, participation in informal economy, child care, child support, child-rearing, neighborhood and housing characteristics, social networks, current health, current and past public aid use, current income, and major life events. The survey was conducted in both English and Spanish by the National Opinion Research Center, (NORC) and was administered in the homes of the respondents.

The Social Opportunity Survey comprised 167 respondents from the main survey who resided in the highest poverty census tracts. By design, the questions were open-ended and organized around the following topics: work experiences, opportunity and mobility, education and expectations for their children, household composition, social classes, finances and interviewer observations. The ethnographic field research included intensive case studies and neighborhood participant observation in nine Chicago neighborhoods. The Employer Survey sample included 187 employers in Chicago and suburban Cook County. The sample was stratified by industry size, type and location. Face to face employer interviews were conducted between July 1988 and March 1989, and focused on attitudes and hiring practices regarding job applicants of different ethnic groups.

Data from the UPFLS is available for download from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). To access data from the UPFLS, click here.

Some recent publications that have used the UPFLS include:
Stier, Haya, and Marta Tienda. The Color of Opportunity: Pathways to Family, Welfare and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Wilson, William Julius, James Quane, and Bruce Rankin. 2001. "The urban underclass." In N. Smelser and P. B. Bates (eds) "International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 11:15945-48, Oxford, Pergamon.

Wilson, William Julius. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Testa, Mark and Marilyn Krogh. "The Effect of Employment in Marriage Among Black Males in Inner-City Chicago." 1995. In The Decline in Marriage among African-Americna: Causes, Consequences and Policy Implications. Edited by M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kerman. Russell Sage Foundation: New York.