1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910788278003321

Autore

Bertram Eva

Titolo

The workfare state : public assistance politics from the new deal to the new democrats / / Eva Bertram

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

0-8122-2444-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (335 p.)

Collana

American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law

Disciplina

362.5/840973

Soggetti

Welfare recipients - Employment - United States - History - 20th century

Welfare recipients - United States - History - 20th century

Public welfare - Political aspects - United States - History - 20th century

Welfare state - United States - History - 20th century

United States Social policy 20th century

United States Politics and government 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Democratic Divisions on Work and Welfare -- Chapter 2. Welfarists Confront Workfarists: The Family Assistance Plan -- Chapter 3. Building Workfare: WIN II, SSI, and EITC -- Chapter 4. The Political Economy of Work and Welfare -- Chapter 5. The Conservative Assault and the Liberal Retreat -- Chapter 6. The New South and the New Democrats -- Chapter 7. Showdown and Settlement -- Chapter 8. The New World of Workfare -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

In the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the United States suffered the most sustained and extensive wave of job destruction since the Great Depression. When families in need sought help from the safety net, however, they found themselves trapped in a system that increasingly tied public assistance to private employment. In The Workfare State, Eva Bertram recounts the compelling history of the evolving social contract from the New Deal to the present to show how a need-based



entitlement was replaced with a work-conditioned safety net, heightening the economic vulnerability of many poor families. The Workfare State challenges the conventional understanding of the development of modern public assistance policy. New Deal and Great Society Democrats expanded federal assistance from the 1930's to the 1960's, according to the standard account. After the 1980 election, the tide turned and Republicans ushered in a new conservative era in welfare politics. Bertram argues that the decisive political struggles took place in the 1960's and 1970's, when Southern Democrats in Congress sought to redefine the purposes of public assistance in ways that would preserve their region's political, economic, and racial order. She tells the story of how the South—the region with the nation's highest levels of poverty and inequality and least generous social welfare policies—won the fight to rewrite America's antipoverty policy in the decades between the Great Society and the 1996 welfare reform. Their successes provided the foundation for leaders in both parties to build the contemporary workfare state—just as deindustrialization and global economic competition made low-wage jobs less effective at providing income security and mobility.