THE NEW FIELD GUIDE TO THE U.S....
THE NEW FIELD GUIDE TO THE U.S. ECONOMY: A Compact and Irreverent Guide to Economic Life in America by Nancy Folbre and the Center for Popular Economics (The New Press: $12.95; 224 pp., illustrated, paperback original.). This collection of numbers and graphs is both more interesting and more disturbing than it sounds. By 1989, the richest 10% of the U.S. population had expanded their share of the net wealth to 68%; in 1992 white women made 70 for every dollar their male counterparts earned (up from 58 in 1967), while African-American women made 89 for each dollar black males made. Nine months of prenatal care for a pregnant woman may cost taxpayers $600--vs. up to $2,500 for one day of care for a premature baby.
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