concepts
housing and urbanization
socioeconomic status
urban geography
Within the cores of American cities, and to a lesser extent in other industrialized countries (although most have better national safety nets than does the United States), lives a sizable group of impoverished people often known as the urban underclass. The term has been the object of much debate because some argue that it dehumanizes those to which it refers; however, the concept is widely acknowledged to have considerable validity. [Source: Encyclopedia of Human Geography; Urban Underclass]
urban underclass