After Welfare

After Welfare PDF Author: Sanford F. Schram
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814771270
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do contemporary welfare policies reflect the realities of the economy and the needs of those in need of public assistance, or are they based on outdated and idealized notions of work and family life? Are we are moving from a "war on poverty" to a "war against the poor?" In this critique of American social welfare policy, Sanford F. Schram explores the cultural anxieties over the putatively deteriorating "American work ethic," and the class, race, sexual and gender biases at the root of current policy and debates. Schram goes beyond analyzing the current state of affairs to offer a progressive alternative he calls "radical incrementalism," whereby activists would recreate a social safety net tailored to the specific life circumstances of those in need. His provocative recommendations include a series of programs aimed at transcending the prevailing pernicious distinction between "social insurance" and "public assistance" so as to better address the needs of single mothers with children. Such programs could include "divorce insurance" or even some form of "pregnancy insurance" for women with no means of economic support. By pushing for such programs, Schram argues, activists could make great strides towards achieving social justice, even in today's reactionary climate.

After Welfare

After Welfare PDF Author: Sanford F. Schram
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814771270
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do contemporary welfare policies reflect the realities of the economy and the needs of those in need of public assistance, or are they based on outdated and idealized notions of work and family life? Are we are moving from a "war on poverty" to a "war against the poor?" In this critique of American social welfare policy, Sanford F. Schram explores the cultural anxieties over the putatively deteriorating "American work ethic," and the class, race, sexual and gender biases at the root of current policy and debates. Schram goes beyond analyzing the current state of affairs to offer a progressive alternative he calls "radical incrementalism," whereby activists would recreate a social safety net tailored to the specific life circumstances of those in need. His provocative recommendations include a series of programs aimed at transcending the prevailing pernicious distinction between "social insurance" and "public assistance" so as to better address the needs of single mothers with children. Such programs could include "divorce insurance" or even some form of "pregnancy insurance" for women with no means of economic support. By pushing for such programs, Schram argues, activists could make great strides towards achieving social justice, even in today's reactionary climate.

After the Welfare State

After the Welfare State PDF Author: Tom G. Palmer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781732587397
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description


Mothers' Work and Children's Lives

Mothers' Work and Children's Lives PDF Author: Rucker C. Johnson
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880993561
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the effects of work requirements imposed by welfare reform on low-income women and their families. The authors pay particular attention to the nature of work, whether it is stable or unstable, the number of hours worked in a week, and regularity and flexibility of work schedules. They also show how these factors make it more difficult for low-income women to balance work and family requirements.

From Welfare to Workfare

From Welfare to Workfare PDF Author: Jennifer Mittelstadt
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876437
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1996, Democratic president Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress "ended welfare as we know it" and trumpeted "workfare" as a dramatic break from the past. But, in fact, workfare was not new. Jennifer Mittelstadt locates the roots of the 1996 welfare reform many decades in the past, arguing that women, work, and welfare were intertwined concerns of the liberal welfare state beginning just after World War II. Mittelstadt examines the dramatic reform of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) from the 1940s through the 1960s, demonstrating that in this often misunderstood period, national policy makers did not overlook issues of poverty, race, and women's role in society. Liberals' public debates and disagreements over welfare, however, caused unintended consequences, she argues, including a shift toward conservatism. Rather than leaving ADC as an income support program for needy mothers, reformers recast it as a social services program aimed at "rehabilitating" women from "dependence" on welfare to "independence," largely by encouraging them to work. Mittelstadt reconstructs the ideology, implementation, and consequences of rehabilitation, probing beneath its surface to reveal gendered and racialized assumptions about the welfare poor and broader societal concerns about poverty, race, family structure, and women's employment.

State of Empowerment

State of Empowerment PDF Author: Carolyn Barnes
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472126202
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book Here

Book Description
On weekday afternoons, dismissal bells signal not just the end of the school day but also the beginning of another important activity: the federally funded after-school programs that offer tutoring, homework help, and basic supervision to millions of American children. Nearly one in four low-income families enroll a child in an after-school program. Beyond sharpening students’ math and reading skills, these programs also have a profound impact on parents. In a surprising turn—especially given the long history of social policies that leave recipients feeling policed, distrusted, and alienated—government-funded after-school programs have quietly become powerful forces for political and civic engagement by shifting power away from bureaucrats and putting it back into the hands of parents. In State of Empowerment Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.

Work Over Welfare

Work Over Welfare PDF Author: Ron Haskins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
As a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, Haskins was one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Here, he portrays the political battles that produced the most dramatic overhaul of the welfare system, since its creation as part of the New Deal.

Immigrants and Welfare

Immigrants and Welfare PDF Author: Michael E. Fix
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610446224
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
The lore of the immigrant who comes to the United States to take advantage of our welfare system has a long history in America's collective mythology, but it has little basis in fact. The so-called problem of immigrants on the dole was nonetheless a major concern of the 1996 welfare reform law, the impact of which is still playing out today. While legal immigrants continue to pay taxes and are eligible for the draft, welfare reform has severely limited their access to government supports in times of crisis. Edited by Michael Fix, Immigrants and Welfare rigorously assesses the welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants' ability to integrate into American society. Immigrants and Welfare draws on fields from demography and law to developmental psychology. The first part of the volume probes the politics behind the welfare reform law, its legal underpinnings, and what it may mean for integration policy. Contributor Ron Haskins makes a case for welfare reform's ultimate success but cautions that excluding noncitizen children (future workers) from benefits today will inevitably have serious repercussions for the American economy down the road. Michael Wishnie describes the implications of the law for equal protection of immigrants under the U.S. Constitution. The second part of the book focuses on empirical research regarding immigrants' propensity to use benefits before the law passed, and immigrants' use and hardship levels afterwards. Jennifer Van Hook and Frank Bean analyze immigrants' benefit use before the law was passed in order to address the contested sociological theories that immigrants are inclined to welfare use and that it slows their assimilation. Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Everett Henderson track trends before and after welfare reform in legal immigrants' use of the major federal benefit programs affected by the law. Leighton Ku looks specifically at trends in food stamps and Medicaid use among noncitizen children and adults and documents the declining health insurance coverage of noncitizen parents and children. Finally, Ariel Kalil and Danielle Crosby use longitudinal data from Chicago to examine the health of children in immigrant families that left welfare. Even though few states took the federal government's invitation with the 1996 welfare reform law to completely freeze legal immigrants out of the social safety net, many of the law's most far-reaching provisions remain in place and have significant implications for immigrants. Immigrants and Welfare takes a balanced look at the politics and history of immigrant access to safety-net supports and the ongoing impacts of welfare. Copublished with the Migration Policy Institute

The Next Welfare State?

The Next Welfare State? PDF Author: Christopher Pierson
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447361199
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Chris Pierson argues that we will need to think quite differently about the British welfare state after COVID-19. He looks back to the welfare state’s origins and development as well as forwards, unearthing some surprising solutions in unexpected places.

Welfare Racism

Welfare Racism PDF Author: Kenneth J. Neubeck
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134001517
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
Welfare Racism analyzes the impact of racism on US welfare policy. Through historical and present-day analysis, the authors show how race-based attitudes, policy making, and administrative policies have long had a negative impact on public assistance programs. The book adds an important and controversial voice to the current welfare debates surrounding the recent legilation that abolished the AFDC.

Ending Welfare as We Know It

Ending Welfare as We Know It PDF Author: R. Kent Weaver
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815798354
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bill Clinton's first presidential term was a period of extraordinary change in policy toward low-income families. In 1993 Congress enacted a major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families. In 1996 Congress passed and the president signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. This legislation abolished the sixty-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and replaced it with a block grant program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It contained stiff new work requirements and limits on the length of time people could receive welfare benefits.Dramatic change in AFDC was also occurring piecemeal in the states during these years. States used waivers granted by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to experiment with a variety of welfare strategies, including denial of additional benefits for children born or conceived while a mother received AFDC, work requirements, and time limits on receipt of cash benefits. The pace of change at the state level accelerated after the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation gave states increased leeway to design their programs. Ending Welfare as We Know It analyzes how these changes in the AFDC program came about. In fourteen chapters, R. Kent Weaver addresses three sets of questions about the politics of welfare reform: the dismal history of comprehensive AFDC reform initiatives; the dramatic changes in the welfare reform agenda over the past thirty years; and the reasons why comprehensive welfare reform at the national level succeeded in 1996 after failing in 1995, in 1993–94, and on many previous occasions. Welfare reform raises issues of race, class, and sex that are as difficult and divisive as any in American politics. While broad social and political trends helped to create a historic opening for welfare reform in the late 1990s, dramatic legislation was not inevitable. The interaction of contextual factors with short