by Theodore Caplow & Howard Bahr

Old Men Drunk and Sober reports the results obtained in the first six years of the Columbia Bowery Project, a study of homelessness and disaffiliation conducted at Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Research. Its major theme is, how different is the skid row man? The research reported in this book seems to be the first large-scale survey of a skid row population to include control groups of non-skid row men. The populations studied include samples of low- and upper-in-come census tracts in New York City. The major focus has been to compile and quantify the life histories of skid row men and to compare aspects of these life histories with those of other more "normal" populations in an attempt to produce both a systematic description of the Bowery population as a whole and an assessment of the sociological theories of the origins and concomitants of homelessness.

Contrasts among the skid row and control samples repeatedly show that the differences between upper-income and poor men are greater than those between skid row men and other poor men. The findings suggest that many of the supposed characteristics of skid row life are merely attributes of poverty and aging. The Bowery man's life history is less distinctive than formerly supposed with respect, for example to marginality or undersocialization. There is no doubt that the skid row man is distinctly unhappy, but many of the indicators of unhappiness are linked to his present location on skid row and his indentity as askid row man.

More books by Theodore Caplow

The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Gude to Trends in America, 1900-2000
Sociologie Militaire
The Academic Market Place
Peace Games
Perverse Incentives - The Neglect of Social Technology in the Public Sector
Elementary Sociology
Recent Social Trends in the United States 1960-1990
Leviathan Transformed - Seven National States in the New Century
The Sociology of Work
The Urban Ambience
Principles of Organization
Two Against One: Coalitions in Triad
Toward Social Hope
Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change & Continuity
All Faithful People: Change & Continuity in Middletown's Religion
Managing an Organization
American Social Trends
Systems of War & Peace

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