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Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has become less generous, and what remains more often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change parallels others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven in part by shifting cultural notions of which social groups are "deserving" and "undeserving." This line was firmly redrawn in the 1990s. Did the re-institutionalization of these categorizations in policy have material consequences? This study examines the relationship between the decline of traditional cash welfare between 2001 and 2015 and two direct measures of wellbeing among households with children: household food insecurity and public school child homelessness. Using models that control for state and year trends, along with other factors, we find that the decline of cash assistance was associated with increases in both forms of hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credit has become a significant institution within the American social safety net. Accordingly, "access to credit" talk pervades the current discourse of financial rights and equality for low-income communities. Indeed, in a rare point of convergence, both progressive and conservative accounts of optimal credit regulation for the working poor rest on the shared conviction that credit is an important tool of "social provision," the range of state policies implemented to improve general welfare. The notion that credit is a valid form of social provision for low-income Americans, however, is deeply flawed. The difficulty with credit as a form of social provision for lowincome Americans is that there is an essential mismatch between the problem and the solution. At its best, credit is a mechanism of intertemporal and intrapersonal redistribution. However, low-income Americans often struggle with persistent financial instability, and decades of data show that they can reasonably expect to be in worse economic shape as time progresses. As an essential matter, then, the problem of entrenched and enduring poverty that leaves people consistently unable to afford basic necessities cannot be addressed by a device that requires future prosperity and economic growth. Moreover, the resulting debt burden transforms credit as social provision from a form of mere intertemporal redistribution into a form of regressive redistribution, in which wealth flows out of already economically vulnerable communities. This reality has broader consequences for the middle class given its own government-sanctioned, heavy reliance on credit in the broader, persistently stagnant economic environment. Thus, our increasingly unfounded dependence on a policy of access to credit as social provision must be set aside in order to begin the difficult task of surfacing and centralizing the more pressing extent of deepening economic, and thus social, inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined the impact of participation in federal means-tested welfare programs on the attainment and maintenance of economic self-sufficiency. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this quasi-experimental investigation compartmentalized 4216 low-income households into an intervention group (n = 2436) and a comparison group (n = 1780). Households in the intervention group received one or more welfare benefits for the most part of the 2008-2013 quinquennium. By contrast, those in the comparison group - although eligible for these benefits - did not receive them. The survey respondents were measured repeatedly over a 56-month period to assess whether welfare receipt impacts their household income steadily beyond 150% of the federal poverty level, after controlling for known predictors. Multivariate analyses displayed medium effect sizes indicating that participation in public assistance did decrease the likelihood of economic self-sufficiency. Macro-implications of these findings for poverty and social welfare stakeholders were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is a persistent problem in the United States, affecting millions of people and many areas of public policy. Nevertheless, public officials have said relatively little about poverty in recent years. What do ordinary Americans think about poverty and government's role in fighting it? This article summarizes two decades of survey data-drawing on ANES, Gallup, NORC/GSS, Pew, and other national polls-to help answer these questions. Americans generally feel positively toward the poor, believe that fighting poverty should be a high priority for government, and favor spending more on the poor. But many people remain skeptical of "welfare," worry about dependence on government aid, and are dissatisfied with past efforts to reduce poverty. Thus, officials could interpret existing polls as a sign to increase or decrease government's role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low-income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation during the period in which welfare reform unfolded. During this time period, voter turnout was decreasing in the United States. We find robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 3 to 4 percentage points, which translates to about 10% relative to the baseline mean) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed. The robust findings suggest that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation, as characterized by voting. The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income. (JEL D72, H53, I38, J21) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of nonprofit Detroit Action Commonwealth (DAC) and its Detroit Soup Kitchens, with the aim of creating settings for members to experience individual and collective power. Topics discussed include laws and policies that create challenges for impoverished Americans such as federal REAL ID Act, history of DAC, and accomplishments of DAC such as working for the Michigan Department of State to establish a new policy of waiving ID card fees.

The worthiness of welfare recipients has long been questioned. However, their stereotypic depictions have changed throughout the decades. In 1996, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) authorized drug testing welfare recipients and denial of benefits for testing positive. The subsequent proliferation of drug testing policy proposals in states across the United States raises questions regarding the portrayal of the drug testing target population. We examined state legislators’ public discourse, proponent and opponent, in the welfare drug testing debate, to assess the social construction of welfare recipients. Proponent discursive statements outnumbered opponent statements nearly 5:1. Proponent discourse was overtly derogatory toward and disparaging of welfare recipients. Opponent discourse was generally more sympathetic and supportive of the target population. However, not all opponents were against welfare drug testing in principle or practice. The analysis demonstrates a strong negative construction of welfare recipients as deviants, and indeed as drug abusers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For many families, child care is a necessity for economic self-sufficiency, as without it caretakers cannot enter and stay in the workforce. However, for many low-income families, child care expenses are so high that they often cannot afford it without government support. Also problematic is that government-supported child care benefits are incrementally lost as a family’s income increases, but often before sufficient income can be sustained to replace that support. This is known as the child care cliff. The focus of this study was to understand how families make decisions about child care and government support when facing this cliff. This article details a mixed-methods study that revealed that families use a combination of resources to make up their income package that they need to manage everyday survival, including government benefits, wages, and social supports. Also, though the cliff effect is a significant barrier to moving from government supports to self-sufficiency, there are multiple other barriers that add to the very real reasons that families have to carefully strategize to survive. The most helpful things for families in strategizing were a flexible job and solid social support networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper focuses on moments and spaces of encounter in which middle class people come into contact with 'poor others'. Much critical poverty work focuses on the re-inscription of difference across class, race and gender lines. We explore where, when and how middle class actors engage with 'poor others' in ways that (sometimes) lead to shifts in neoliberal and individualized understandings of poverty. Our paper explores boundary-breaking transformative moments that arise through spatial encounters. Drawing on Valentine's 'zones of encounter' we explore how middle class encounters with poverty are mediated by two sets of spatial processes: processes of (self)government and of radical contact. We draw illustrative examples from two projects: on rural poverty in the Pacific Northwest and on community development in Chicago. In each case we trace the ways in which these spaces of encounter foster governance and/or contact processes that reproduce or disrupt dominant discourses about poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Boston, Massachusetts' poor population and how they utilized the city's Almshouse between 1795 and 1801. The authors explain that most Boston Almshouse inmates were from the Boston neighborhood known as the North End rather than from pastoral areas. They discuss the residential mobility and residential patterns of the Almshouse inmates, explore how immigrants seemed to cluster together at the Almshouse, and examine the relationship between economics, social class, and population density in the city.

In this review, we focus on current research on the major welfare program in the United States, food security programs, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Unemployment Insurance, child support, and tax provisions such as the Earned Income Tax Credit that provide substantial financial support for low-income households and other potentially vulnerable populations such as the elderly and the unemployed. Since many of these are programs specifically targeted at poor and low-income individuals, we also describe how poverty is defined in the United States, update readers on the ongoing debate over poverty measurement, and provide some comparison to how it is measured outside the United States. Looking across the various social policies addressed in this review and the associated recent research, one clear theme emerges: the United States is very concerned about work disincentives potentially embedded within these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of a 'sympathetic public' cohering around the U.S. welfare state's wreckage that is tuned to the material dimensions of emplacement. It does this through an exploration of efforts to bring a national public housing museum to Chicago. Museum supporters mobilized the properties of ruined public housing to summon affinities and identifications with the U.S. poor and to reconfigure public reckoning about poverty in the United States. The public examined here is an anticipated one. Conceptually, I depart from text-based understandings of publics and publicity. I follow how museum supporters sought to curate encounters with ruined housing in ways that would socialize beholders into the attentiveness necessary to reflect and act properly on poverty. The 'sympathetic' dimensions of this anticipated public operate on two levels. First, future visitors' identifications with the struggles of bygone residents would combat 'unsympathetic' representations of U.S. poor. Second, visceral contact with a place once inhabited by bygone residents would render contagious the perspectives, values, and practices they used to navigate social inequality and state-mediated neglect. The anticipated public then also anticipates the kind of citizenry capable of managing social protection at a 'postwelfare' moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on child support issues with regards to low income families in the U.S. Many families have had problem providing support for their children. Welfare reform programs were initiated in 1996 with the implementation of the U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. But nonresident parents were forced to pay extra due to non-availability of benefits for them. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) was also not able to overcome this issue.

This study examines the residential spatial patterns of Housing Choice Voucher holders in Western New York in 2004 and 2008 (n = 4,600 and n = 4,759, respectively). It seeks to answer two questions: Has the concentration of voucher holders in impoverished and same race neighborhoods diminished overtime; and are voucher holders, particularly African Americans, relocating in patterns that would lead to reghettoization or the reconcentration of race and poverty? This type of residential pattern puts voucher holders at risk for resettling in neighborhoods that limit economic and social mobility. Data from the public housing agency contracted to distribute Housing Choice Vouchers were examined. Exploratory spatial analysis techniques were used to identify spatial outliers and to form a hypothesis on spatial patterns of relocation. Spatial clustering analyses were conducted to test the hypothesis on the reghettoization of African American voucher holders in recently relocated neighborhoods. Analyses indicate that African American voucher holders are moving out of impoverished, hypersegregated areas into historically White neighborhoods. A limited number of voucher holders are moving in clustered patterns, which lead to reghettoization. Future research is needed that highlights the role that housing assistance providers play in the residential location choices of low-income clients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyzes factors associated with transitions into and out of disconnectedness,which is defined as being disconnected from the labor market, welfare, and other substantial financial supports. Findings are based on discrete-time hazard models estimated with a sample of New Jersey welfare recipients followed for 5 years. Work history, human capital, policy environment, and economic conditions are found to be the factors most strongly associated with the dynamics of disconnectedness. More work history and human capital are associated with a lower probability of becoming disconnected and a higher probability of leaving disconnected status for employment. Individuals relying on unemployment insurance benefits are at high risk of becoming disconnected. This suggests that the expiration of such benefits often leads to disconnectedness. Receipt of sanctions for noncompliance with welfare's work requirements are found to triple the risk of becoming disconnected. Finally, transitions into disconnectedness increase sharply with increases in the unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2000 and 2005, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, until recently, the Food Stamp Program) caseload increased by half. As the Great Recession unfolded, the SNAP caseload grew even more rapidly. Further, over the past two decades the composition of the caseload has shifted sharply away from families combining food and cash assistance and toward families receiving food assistance in the absence of any other major, means-tested income support. By analyzing components of the caseload separately, we provide new and more insightful estimates of the effects of food and cash assistance policies and the economy on both the change in the composition of the caseload and the large caseload swings over the 1990s and 2000s. We find that the economy can explain a portion of caseload changes, but not compositional shifts. Food and cash assistance policies help to explain both changes. In total, the combination of SNAP and welfare policy changes account for about half of the sharp increase since 1994 in the share of SNAP households receiving food, but not cash, assistance. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines social welfare in the mining communities of Virginia City and Madison County in Montana Territory during the 1860s. According to the author, these communities were unable to sustain organized welfare programs when mining operations failed and their populations decreased. It is suggested that the uncertainties inherent in mining towns had discouraged investments in long-term projects such as hospitals and homes for the poor which would have benefited the indigent in these communities. Topics discussed include laws concerning the care and burial of the poor, medical practitioners, taxation, and the transportation of the sick and indigent from the territory.

An essay is presented on the U.S. Food Stamp Plan established during the New Deal policies of 1939 to 1943 and examines how this form of food welfare benefited the poor, food producers, and grocers and wholesalers. It discusses problems associated with food distribution plans implemented by the U.S. government during the Great Depression, describes how the plan was a reflection of Keynesian economic policies of the time, and comments on the legacy of the program in U.S. history.

This article uses population-level administrative data from Rhode Island's Food Stamp Program to examine exits from the Food Stamp Program by elders. Multivariate event history models estimate the relations of multiple program participation and the timing of eligibility reviews to the probability of exiting food stamps. Results suggest that elders who are age 65 or older and who receive both Supplemental Security Income and food stamps have a higher probability of exiting the Food Stamp Program than do elders who receive only food stamps. The timing of eligibility reviews is also found to be positively associated with the probability of exit from food stamps. This article is argued to extend conceptual models of the determinants of food stamp exits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the efficacy and legality of child exclusion scheme adopted by several nations to control population. It mentions the child exclusion program adopted in some U.S. states such as Wisconsin where welfare benefits were used to discourage childbearing by low-income women. It discusses the population policies of countries including India, China and Ghana, ethical standards for population policies, and the targeting of a particular marginalized group using this program.

Because of dramatic levels of economic volatility and massive changes in welfare policies, scholars in this decade worried anew about whether our official poverty measure, adopted in the 1960s, is adequate. Poverty's causes continued to be debated, with demographic factors often pitted against policy and maternal employment changes. Some scholars focused on events that trigger spirals into poverty or poverty exits. The literature on consequences of poverty featured new techniques for identifying underlying processes and mechanisms. Researchers also explored “neighborhood effects” and focused on poverty deconcentration efforts. Finally, scholars produced a voluminous literature on the efforts to reform welfare and their subsequent effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of Dexter Asylum in Providence, Rhode Island as an example of changing poor relief practices in the early 19th century United States. The creation of such poorhouses or almshouses, part of the shift in public welfare from "outdoor relief" to "indoor relief," is discussed as part of a system of social control implemented by elites to preserve the values of industrial capitalism. The philanthropy behind the 1828 construction of the Dexter Asylum is discussed, as is the experience of early inmates such as Eliza Ann Case.

Currently 30.2% of female-headed households with children in the United States experience food insecurity, defined as the lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life. In 2007, approximately 12.4 million children were at risk for hunger. When female-headed households and households with children have the highest prevalence of food insecurity and hunger in the US, the participation of low-income mothers in the development and administration of policies and programs related to nutrition and poverty are fundamental to the process of ending hunger and improving child well-being. In this article, we describe the Witnesses to Hunger program, a participatory advocacy project that uses the "photovoice" technique to engage mothers to take photos and record their stories about poverty and hunger with the intent to inform social welfare policy in the US. Witnesses to Hunger is grounded in the human rights framework that is supported by international conventions on the rights of women, the rights of the child, and economic, social, and cultural rights. The Witnesses to Hunger program works to increase civic participation of low-income women and to maintain a strategic public awareness campaign. After introducing the Witnesses to Hunger program, this article describes the past decade of unchanging food insecurity disparities, demonstrates the lack of participatory dialogue in health and welfare programs, and provides examples of how Witnesses to Hunger counters the conventional dialogue about welfare. Throughout, this paper demonstrates how the participatory approach of the Witnesses to Hunger program improves our understanding of basic human needs and the social determinants of health, and informs legislators on how to improve health and welfare policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate well-being changes for single mother headed families targeted by recent tax and welfare reforms. Measured income changes sharply differ from consumption changes. We examine disaggregated consumption, time use, and health insurance coverage. Increases in housing and transportation spending mostly account for the rise in consumption in the bottom quintiles. We find modest improvement in housing quality, but the evidence is less strong at the very bottom. The consumption of nonmarket time for those in the bottom half of the consumption distribution falls sharply, indicating a loss in utility for those families if nonmarket time is valued above $3 per hour. ( JEL D12, I31, I32, J12, J16) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the funding of civil legal services for the poor in the U.S. from 1985 to 1990, prior to a fundamental change in legal services regulations and appropriations that occurred in 1996. While federal funding for legal services was a rather uniform distribution to states by poverty population, states varied in terms of their financial support for legal services. This paper explores the sources of that variation. Using a pooled cross sectional time series model, I find that states with liberal political cultures and liberal citizen public opinion spent more for legal services, even when taking into consideration states' economic conditions, the amount of federal spending within the state, caseloads, and the level of private contributions in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the public perception of poverty and the measurement of poverty intersect in ways in which neither area of study is fully aware. That is, some research focuses on the public's opinion of the poor and of welfare recipients, and other research examines poverty. measurement and how its variants determine whom we consider to be poor in the U.S.; but relatively little work has explored, either conceptually or empirically, the intersection of these two fields. This essay aims to do just that. After presenting a general summary of these two topics, I propose how each offers new perspectives for the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, there has been a spirited debate over the impact of the welfare expansion associated with the War on Poverty. Many analysts have maintained that public assistance expansion during this period decreased poverty by raising the incomes of the poor (an income enhancement effect), while others have contended that welfare expansion increased poverty by discouraging the poor from working (a work disincentive effect). There has been considerable empirical research about the historical effect of welfare on poverty, nearly all of which relies on the poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of persons with income less than the “poverty threshold”) as an indicator of the extent of poverty. However, this work has not employed designs that allow researchers to sort out distinct income enhancement and work disincentive effects. We develop a model of poverty rates in the American states that permits estimation of these distinct effects—based on state-level time-series data observed annually for the years 1960–90—and we find that welfare had both effects during our period of analysis. We also calculate the net impact of increases in welfare benefits on the poverty rate—taking into account both work disincentive and income enhancement effects. Our results indicate that this net impact is dependent on three variables: the initial level of cash benefits, wage levels for unskilled workers, and the share of the benefit increase provided through cash rather than in-kind assistance. Because of historical trends in these variables, since the 1970s welfare spending has become increasingly less effective in reducing the poverty rate. However, the significance of this result for policymakers must be tempered by evidence that flaws in the poverty rate as an indicator of poverty make it so that any finding about the net effect of an increase in welfare benefits on the poverty rate underestimates welfare's ability to lessen the true extent of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article's primary objective is to assess the influence of race on the provision of cash assistance to the poor. Specifically, I argue that state choices in the distribution of cash assistance are motivated by the relative number of African-American welfare families present in states. I employ a form of statistical analysis known as multivariate analysis, which allows one to test the impact of several variables on the choices states make in administering welfare programs under TANF. I find that states with a relatively large number of African-American welfare families dole out less in cash assistance than others, all else being equal. Thereafter, I explain why the proportion of African-American welfare families influences state-cash assistance programs. I suggest, first, that the differential treatment may be the upshot of the political economy of state governments, as explicated by Sheryll Cashin and others. In this view, African Americans, particularly poor African Americans, vote less and, as a result, exert little influence on state legislatures. I argue, next, that there is a long history of discrimination against African Americans in social welfare programs, which informs current patterns and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses upon factors related to the desire of social work students to work with the poor. It examines three sets of variables: students' perceptions of the causes of poverty, the best way of dealing with it, and preferred professional interventions. The sample consists of 514 graduating BSW students from Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and the United States. The findings indicate that interest to work with the poor is associated with less inclination to perceive poverty as caused by lack of motivation, effort, and responsibility; more inclination to view the expansion of state provision as the best means of dealing with poverty, less inclination to support its reduction; and more desire to employ policy practice and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of welfare-to-work programs across the country has led to a number of questions about the effectiveness of this reform effort and the experiences of welfare recipients. This study of seventeen welfare recipients in the state of Oregon reports on what the welfare-to-work experience is like for women in two types of communities, one rural and one urban. Our findings suggest that women in both communities share similar frustrations, but overall assess the welfare- to-work program ideology positively. Women in the rural community do report more personal challenges in finding and keeping a job based on the lack of public transportation, limited job prospects in the rural area, and dissatisfaction with the education and job skill training available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new framework for describing well-being and hardship among low-income families. We describe previously unmeasured costs of being poor as latent, those costs that are hidden and not counted in other poverty measures, and sequential, those costs that are consequential and have subsequent cost implications. Using data from in-depth interviews with cash assistance recipients and working poor heads of household, we explore latent and sequential costs of poverty related to health. Families experience a wide variety of latent and sequential costs associated with their dental, vision, and general health needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reasons for the nonparticipation of beneficiaries in government welfare programs in the U.S. The issue has been discussed very rarely by legal scholars, which is inconsistent with their enormous interest in redistribution. The lack of attention is even stranger when one considers the fact that welfare benefits are among the most direct ways of redistribution. Nonparticipation in welfare programs is very common in the country, even if the program is in well-known. Low participation rates among low-income individuals is very hard to understand considering the fact that for such individuals the value of a given benefit is relatively high. According to Nobel laureate Gary Becker eligible individuals do not participate in welfare programs since they feel that receiving welfare benefits would result in lowering of their utility through the development of dependency and other such habits. However, the view of Becker does not explain all the causes of nonparticipation.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, changed the philosophical ground and rules and regulations that apply to low-income families with children who seek federal income support. TANF recipients have less flexibility in charting their life courses than AFDC recipients had. This article presents the findings of a study that investigated how TANF leavers, in comparison with AFDC leavers, fared economically after they left the cash assistance rolls. The major finding is that the income status of AFDC leavers increased considerably, but that of TANF leavers declined. The authors argue that TANF leavers fared less well economically because their decisions about whether to work, to engage in work-related activities, and to leave cash assistance rolls were under stricter control. The data sources for this study were the 1993 and 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]