ABSTRACT
The process tends to blur some sharp truths concerning present-day America, where the erosions of poverty can be found at every age level, including infancy. One-fifth of America's children live the poverty line. Four of every ten poor Americans over fourteen years of age hold jobs. The late Michael Harrington, a man who never forgot the poor, liked to observe that there was nothing wrong with America's heart. There have in fact been moments in our social development when our heart and our head have shown signs of cooperating with each other. More than most aspects or politics or the elderly, the long-term-care dilemma challenges our basic values and thus invites the most imaginative social response we can summon. "By funneling money back into the American family," observes the historian William Graebner, "social security promised to restore the primacy of home and family."
