The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy. By Brian Steensland. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. xvi, 304 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-691-12714-9.)

Abstract

After working for the Richard M. Nixon administration, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a self-serving and intellectually playful account of Nixon's failed attempt to pass the Family Assistance Plan. Now, nearly two generations later, a book comes along that tries to place the battle for a guaranteed annual income in a larger historical context. Less entertaining than Moynihan's account, Brian Steensland's book is at least as enlightening. It carries the freight of the sociologist concerned with making a theoretical contribution to his field, yet it also benefits from careful archival research that leads to an intriguing historical narrative. In Steensland's account, Nixon made a sincere effort to create a guaranteed national income. His plan failed, according to Steensland, because conservatives recognized Nixon's proposal for the radical plan it was. In particular, they observed how the plan would blur the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, and shift the policy discussion from welfare dependence and moral failings to the more fundamental question of poverty. If the plan had succeeded (and it passed in the House of Representatives twice), it might well have been a program that could have been sustained far into the future. A line of policy development that ends with the abolition of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the Bill Clinton administration might instead have led to a gradual reduction of the poverty level in America. Stigmatized groups, such as single black women caring for children, might have been folded into the group known as the working poor.