Christopher Jenks, a highly regarded sociologist who helped transform public and expert opinion on complex policy issues such as homelessness, income inequality and racial gaps in standardized testing, said on Saturday. He died at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was 88 years old.
His wife, political scientist Jane Munsbridge, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease.
Jenks had an unconventional background for academic social scientists. He received his bachelor's degree in English literature and then a bachelor's degree as an opinion journalist, and despite serving as chairman of sociology contributions at Harvard University, he never received his Ph.D.
If anything, the background seemed to help him. In books and articles, he writes clear and concise sentences backed by finely polished data, often in a novel way that rejects traditional left and right sectors, cutting into quick discussions of policy debates. We presented the intricate discussion.
His 1994 book, The Homeless, is a great example. With just 176 pages including the end notes, he provided a dramatically lower estimate of the country's homeless population than was assumed at the time. It was inflated to draw attention to the problem.
He then walked the reasons for the rise in homelessness — including reducing social services and closing the mental system — followed by a suite of often surprising prescriptions, including retrieving the “Skid Row” neighborhood. I've given this explanation.
His 1972 report, “Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effects of Family and Schooling in America,” was written by seven Harvard University peers, and despite many policymakers, the 1960s. We extracted communications about data accumulated in the age group, and extracted communications about data accumulated in the 1960s. “Hope, there were limits to what education reform could do to reduce income inequality.
The book was widely welcome and was equally widely misunderstood. He was not opposed to education, but he was limiting his arguments of inequality. Instead, he advocated more direct and important policies, such as tax credits and other income support.
Jenks also refreshingly and willingly proved that he would change his mind when things changed. By the 1990s, he had changed his position on education to some extent. As manufacturing jobs fell and the demand for skilled workers grew, the benefits of education became more pronounced, he said.
He joined Harvard University in 1967 as a lecturer and spent the rest of his career in academia, but he kept his foothold in journalism. In 1973 he helped find working papers for a new society. This is a crazy periodical dedicated to sifting through the successes and failures of Lyndon B. Johnson's great society.
In 1990, he and several other journalistic-inclined social scientists founded a leading American journal on the left. Together with Kathryn Edin, he wrote one of his first feature articles.
The article, “Real Welfare Issues,” was Vintage Jenks. It grew from observations by his graduate student, Dr. Edin, and achieved its objectives for the many aid recipients who worked under the table.
As the writers have shown through thorough analysis, the problem was not a greedy welfare cheat, but a harmful aspect of the system. It's too little and cuts that support as soon as people look for other means of income. That insight has done a lot to frame the debate on welfare reform in the 1990s.
“Most people assume that the profits are simply low and that they force beneficiaries to live frugally,” they write. “But low profits have another, more sinister effect that neither conservative nor liberals want to admit. They lie to most welfare recipients, lies to and fools to survive. It will be done.”
Christopher Jenks was born in Baltimore on October 22, 1936. His parents initially chose to abandon his middle name, then changed their minds and gave him “Sandy,” multiple versions of his childhood nickname.
His father, Francis, was an architect and his mother, Elizabeth (Pleasant) Jenks, overseeing the household. Jenks was wealthy, and Christopher was educated in expensive private schools, including Phillips Exeter, who graduated in 1954.
He received his English degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a Masters degree in Human Development from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1959.
Moving to Washington, he wrote and supported the editors of the new Republic and was a fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank.
His first two marriages ended with divorce. In addition to Dr. Mansbridge, who married in 1976, he was survived by his son Natt. their grandchildren; and brother, Stephen.
Jenks moved to Northwestern University in 1979 and returned to Harvard University in 1996. He retired in 2016.
He retained his willingness to defeat the liberal orthodox data demanded, but Jenks took to heart that he believes in the need for large-scale government intervention to alleviate inequality. .
He argued that even if many liberals in the 1980s and '90s were against such programs, the war on poverty was primarily at work.
He said the issue is one of the perceptions. People hope to not only eliminate income disparities, such as Medicaid and helping families with dependent children, but also resolve many social illnesses to resolve things they couldn't do. Ta.
“Relief for crime and family breakdowns exists even deeper and requires a change in the fundamental character of society as well as some innovative government programs,” Jencks wrote in 1996 American Enterprises. He said this in his speech at the Institute. “But that's another story.”
