ABSTRACT
For many years urbanists, liberal as well as conservative, viewed the growth of welfare as essentially related to the migration of the poor from obscure hidden pockets of poverty in the agrarian South to the urban North-as a Southern problem transported to Northern cities. How realistic is this model? The discussion which follows touches first on the geographic origins of welfare recipients. How long have they lived in New York? Where did they come from? What kind of place did they live in before they came to the city? And why did they come to New York?
