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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.
Work and the Welfare State places street-level organizations at the analytic center of welfare-state politics, policy, and management. This volume offers a critical examination of efforts to change the welfare state to a workfare state by looking at on-the-ground issues in six countries: the US, UK, Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. An international group of scholars contribute organizational studies that shed new light on old debates about policies of workfare and activation. Peeling back the political rhetoric and technical policy jargon, these studies investigate what really goes on in the name of workfare and activation policies and what that means for the poor, unemployed, and marginalized populations subject to these policies. By adopting a street-level approach to welfare state research, Work and the Welfare State reveals the critical, yet largely hidden, role of governance and management reforms in the evolution of the global workfare project. It shows how these reforms have altered organizational arrangements and practices to emphasize workfare’s harsher regulatory features and undermine its potentially enabling ones. As a major contribution to expanding the conceptualization of how organizations matter to policy and political transformation, this book will be of special interest to all public management and public policy scholars and students.
This country has long debated the question of how to design the welfare system, particularly the federally supported Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program which provides cash assistance to families headed primarily by female single parents. A pressing issue is whether welfare programs should continue to be broad entitlements or whether they should become "reciprocal obligations" whereby work or participation in an activity leading to work is required. Of particular concern in AFDC policy are questions about whether this aid reduces incentives for people to work and, thus, promotes dependency. Findings from a three-year evaluation of workfare programs in Arkansas, San Diego (California), Virginia, West Virginia, and Baltimore (Maryland) include the following: (1) it is feasible, under certain conditions and on the scale at which the demonstration programs were implemented, to tie the receipt of welfare to participation obligations; (2) a number of different ways of structuring and targeting programs will yield effective results; (3) in cases in which states chose to operate mandatory workfare, the interim results do not support the strongest claims of critics or advocates; and (4) programs led to relatively modest increases in employment, which in some cases translated into even smaller welfare savings, but, the changes were large enough to justify program costs. A table illustrating the key characteristics of state work/welfare initiatives and a table summarizing the impact of AFDC work/welfare programs are included. A list of 49 references is appended. (FMW)
This collection of 12 essays addresses the issue of welfare reform, providing an overview of welfare reform proposals, the politics and history of reform, and the evidence on the efficacy of past policies. Cloth edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.
This book examines the political economy of workfare, the umbrella term for welfare-to-work initiatives that have been steadily gaining ground since candidate Bill Clinton's 1992 promise to "end welfare as we know it." Peck traces the development, diffusion, and implementation of workfare policies in the United States, and their export to Canada and the United Kingdom. He explores how reforms have been shaped by labor markets and political conditions, how gender and race come into play, and how local programs fit into the broader context of neoliberal economics and globalization. The book cogently demonstrates that workfare rarely involves large-scale job creation, but is more concerned with deterring welfare claims and necessitating the acceptance of low-paying, unstable jobs. Integrating labor market theory, critical policy analysis, and extensive field research, Peck exposes the limitations of workfare policies and points toward more equitable alternatives.