Civil Disorder and the Welfare Explosion: A Two-Step Process

Abstract

Upon not finding a direct relationship between civil disorder and welfare growth in American cities in the late 1960s, some analysts have rejected the Piven and Cloward (1971) thesis that the expansion of welfare in the late 1960s operated largely as aform of social control so as to recreate political stability. We hypothesize that the welfare explosion in the late 1960s was in part the result of a two-step process in which civil disorder impelled the national government to enact liberalizations of welfare policy which in turn were most actively implemented by those states most wracked by rioting. Analysis of the relative state growth rates in the number offamilies receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children suggests the plausibility of our hypothesis and the Piven and Cloward thesis. Piven and Cloward's (1971) thesis on the role of welfare in western capitalist societies lies at the center of the debate over the welfare explosion of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. According to Piven and Cloward, the historical role of public-welfare has been one of cyclical expansion and contraction in response to the alternating needs of the state for political stability and acceptance of lowwage work by the poor. During times of political stability, public welfare primarily functions to enforce on the poor the work norm of selfsufficiency by restricting access to aid. During periods of unrest among the poor, public welfare functions largely to promote political stability by easing the poor's access to aid. In the 1960s the growing political unrest of poor blacks escalated into over 160 major riots between 1965 and 1968 (Feagin and Hahn, 1973) and prompted the dramatic rise in welfare recipients in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Piven and Cloward, 1971:222-47). Various researchers have provided empirical support for the relationship between civil disorder and welfare growth in the late 1960s (Betz, 1974; Jennings, 1979; Isaac and Kelly, 1981). Critics, however, have rejected this thesis upon finding no relationship between riottorn cities and increases in welfare (Durman, 1973; Albritton, 1979). Our analysis seeks to resolve these conflicting findings. We provide evidence supportive of the hypothesis that the welfare explosion was in part the result of a