The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor, and may have been coined by American sociologist and anthropologist Oscar Lewis in 1961. The underclass, according to Lewis, has "a strong present-time orientation, with little ability to delay gratifaction and plan for the future" (p. xxvi). The term was also used by Gunnar Myrdal in 1962, before the usage came into wide circulation in the early 1… (More on Underclass)