+This excerpt is from a 1990 special series entitled By the Year 2000 that was produced by KCET in Los Angeles. This particular episode explores the underclass, a sociological term used to describe people living at the very bottom of the social ladder. The report identifies a bundle of social problems commonly associated with people living in entrenched poverty: unemployment, crime, drug use, welfare dependency, teen pregnancy, and single-parent households. One could debate whether the analysis in the report represents insightful social observation or a stereotyped representation of urban poverty—or perhaps some of both. Regardless, the report expresses the prevailing social understanding of poverty in this era. Two years later, during the LA Riots, many social commentators viewed the unrest as the result of deep frustration and disillusionment from the underclass, and argued that the roots of the riots could be traced to many of the social problems described in this report
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