History Of Welfare In America Research Articles

Home Visitation and Young Children: An Approach Worth Investing In? and commentaries

Home Visitation and Young Children: An Approach Worth Investing In? and commentaries

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Assessing Welfare Reform, Over a Decade Later

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Assessing Welfare Reform, Over a Decade Later

Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics

Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States. In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients' experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more. They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers. Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square-welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.

Workers' Compensation, Federalism, and the Heavy Hand of History

Workers' compensation was the first social insurance program to gain widespread acceptance in the United States, and as such became one of the foundations of the modern American welfare state.The original and more gendered name for this program was workmen's compensation. The term “workers' compensation” did not become common until the 1970s. I will use both names in this article, depending on the context. Most states passed workmen's compensation laws between 1911 and 1920, and all but two states did so by 1935. The other major social policy innovation of this era were mothers' pensions laws, which were targeted at the poor children of single mothers. These laws also spread rapidly in the 1910s and were on the books in virtually every state by 1935.Although minimum wage and maximum hours laws for women also passed in many states prior to the New Deal, they have generally received less scholarly attention than workmen's compensation or mothers' pensions. The major histories of the American welfare stateEdward D. Berkowitz, America's Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Edward D. Berkowitz and Kim McQuaid, Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform revised ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992); Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935, 2nd ed. (1968; Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986; Charles Noble, Welfare As We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, 6th ed. (New York: Free Press, 1999); Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). always acknowledge the importance of workmen's compensation and mothers' pensions in the early twentieth century, and some authorsBarbara J. Nelson, “The Gender, Race, and Class Origins of Early Welfare Policy and the Welfare State: A Comparison of Workmen's Compensation and Mothers' Aid,” in Women, Politics, and Change, ed. Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), 413–35. argue that these two programs established the major fault lines of social provision – between social insurance and public assistance, between employed male workers and unpaid mothers – for the rest of the century.

Thinking Big: Can National Values or Class Factions Explain the Development of Social Provision in the United States?: A Review Essay

Thinking big about the development of social policies in the United States has become fashionable. Until recently, occasional comprehensive histories of social provision in America focused on single periods of reform ferment, such as the Progressive Era, or the New Deal, or the Great Society. Then, James T. Patterson's 1981 book America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1980, and Michael B. Katz's 1986 book In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, provided overviews of American attitudes toward poverty and attempts to do something about it from the nineteenth century to the present. These authors were clearly perplexed by the devolution of the antipoverty efforts of the War on Poverty and the Great Society into the political stalemates of the late 1970s and the conservative backlashes of the 1980s. Their books seem to be trying to use rich descriptive overviews of the past to gain some perspective on where American “welfare reforms” might go in the future.

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: The Social History of Welfare in America. Michael B. Katz

<i>In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: The Social History of Welfare in America</i>. Michael B. Katz

Michael B. Katz. In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 338 pp. $22.95 (cloth) (Reviewed by Molly Ladd-Taylor)

Michael B. Katz. In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 338 pp. $22.95 (cloth) (Reviewed by Molly Ladd-Taylor)

&lt;bold&gt;In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America&lt;/bold&gt;. By Michael B. Katz. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 338 pp. $22.95 cloth

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. By Michael B. Katz. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 338 pp. $22.95 cloth In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. By Katz Michael B.. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 338 pp. $22.95 cloth. Paul Adams Paul Adams School of Social Work University of IowaIowa City Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 33, Issue 1, January-February, Pages 72–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/33.1.72-a Published: 01 January 1988

Review: In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, by Michael B. Katz

Review: <i>In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America</i>, by Michael B. Katz

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, by Michael B. Katz

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, <i>by Michael B. Katz</i>

Michael B. Katz, In the shadow of the poorhouse: a social history of welfare in America, New York, Basic Books; London, Harper &amp; Row, 1986, 8vo, pp. xiv, 338, $24.95/£22.95.

Michael B. Katz, In the shadow of the poorhouse: a social history of welfare in America, New York, Basic Books; London, Harper &amp; Row, 1986, 8vo, pp. xiv, 338, $24.95/£22.95.

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America.Michael B. Katz

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsIn the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. Michael B. Katz Hugh HecloHugh Heclo Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 93, Number 2Sep., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/228773 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

&lt;sc&gt;michael b. katz&lt;/sc&gt; . &lt;italic&gt;In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America&lt;/italic&gt; . New York: Basic. 1986. Pp. xiv, 338. $22.95

Journal Article michael b. katz . In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America . New York: Basic. 1986. Pp. xiv, 338. $22.95 Get access Katz Michael B. . In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America . New York : Basic . 1986 . Pp. xiv , 338 . $22.95 . Walter I. Trattner Walter I. Trattner University of Wisconsin , Milwaukee Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 92, Issue 3, June 1987, Page 734, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/92.3.734 Published: 01 June 1987

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America

The Poorhouse Era * The Origins and Failure of the Poorhouse Poverty * Outdoor Relief * The Theory and Practice of Scientific Charity * The Transformation of the Poorhouse Building The Semi-Welfare State * Saving Children * Reorganizing Cities * Reorganizing the Labor Market * Reorganizing the Nation From The War On Poverty To The War On Welfare * The War on Poverty and the Expansion of Social Welfare * The War on Welfare

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America

In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America. By Walter I. Trattner. (New York: The Free Press, 1974. Pp. 276. $9.00.)

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America. By Walter I. Trattner. (New York: The Free Press, 1974. Pp. 276. $9.00.)

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, by Walter I. Trattner. Free Press, New York, 1974. $9.00 Hardbound, $3.95 Paperbound. 276 pp

(1976). From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, by Walter I. Trattner. Free Press, New York, 1974. $9.00 Hardbound, $3.95 Paperbound. 276 pp. Journal of Education for Social Work: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 124-125.

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America

From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America