Ebook: U.S. Social Welfare Reform: Policy Transitions from 1981 to the Present

Nearly half a century after Lyndon Johnson coined the phrase, America continues to fight the war on poverty, especially as such modern realities as the global economy, job outsourcing, and the recession contribute to the numbers of the unemployed and the working poor. As social welfare and reform efforts are debated in Congress and local agencies, facts regarding past programs are often elusive.

U.S. Social Welfare Reform examines the evolution of major Federal cash assistance programs to low-income families, from the advent of the Reagan administration to the early Obama years. Written for the professional (but not requiring expertise in quantitative analysis to understand it), it details which programs succeeded, analyzes why others failed, and highlights the need for further reform in the context of today’s economic climate. This volume:

• Traces the changes from the Federal/state open entitlement AFDC program to the state-run, time-limited TANF initiative.
• Explores the development of the Earned Income Tax Credit program.
• Features two sets of National Longitudinal Survey data on EITC-eligible families.
• Includes original results of outcome studies of youth participating in job training and education programs.
• Evaluates the Obama administration’s social policy initiatives in meeting the challenges of the current recession.
• Revisits previously rejected policies that would benefit low-income working families.

The uniqueness of its scope and presentation suits U.S. Social Welfare Reform to researchers in family relations, family sociology, economics of the family, and social policy, whether the task at hand is reviewing past events or charting a future course of action.

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U. S. Social Welfare Reform examines pivotal changes in social welfare for low-income families in the United States between 1981, the advent of the Reagan administration, and 2008, the end of the G.W. Bush administration. It focuses on the change from the Federal-state open entitlement Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to the time-limited state run Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program which Congress authorized with passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. The book also focuses on the development of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, enacted in 1975 against the backdrop of failed efforts to nationalize AFDC which aimed at providing a basic income to all poor families, but which blossomed with continued bipartisan support in the 1990s. This book also explores alternative strategies to assist low-income families, including job training programs. It present original research on the educational and economic well-being of youth from low-income families who participated in government sponsored job training programs in the late 1970 and early 1980s. The book seeks a middle ground between general and technical social policy texts. It provides more depth than is available in the more general social policy texts. Further, while the more comprehensive texts often rely on government documents and reports relying on Current Population Survey data to profile program use, this book relies on panel data from the National Longitudinal Surveys and presents original research that builds upon prior related research and scholarship about the role of the federal government in social welfare provisioning in general and AFDC/TANF and EITC use in particular and on school-to-work transition programs. It presents related technical material in a narrative style better suited to professionals and policy makers who may lack expertise in quantitative analysis.