Download or read book Policing Welfare written by Spencer Headworth and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Means-tested government assistance in the United States requires recipients to meet certain criteria and continue to maintain their eligibility so that benefits are paid to the “truly needy.” Welfare is regarded with such suspicion in this country that considerable resources are spent policing the boundaries of eligibility, which are delineated by an often confusing and baroque set of rules and regulations. Even minor infractions of the many rules can cause people to be dropped from these programs, and possibly face criminal prosecution. In this book, Spencer Headworth offers the first study of the structure of fraud control in the welfare system by examining the relations between different levels of governmental agencies, from federal to local, and their enforcement practices. Policing Welfare shows how the enforcement regime of welfare has been constructed to further stigmatize those already living in poverty and deepens disparities of class, race, and gender in our society.
Download or read book Overthrowing the Queen written by Tom Mould and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the popular myths and unseen realities of welfare, this study reveals the political power of folklore and the possibilities of storytelling. In 1976, Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail with an extraordinary account of a woman committing massive welfare fraud. The story caught fire and a devastating symbol of the misuse government programs was born: the Welfare Queen. Overthrowing the Queen examines these legends of fraud and abuse while bringing to light personal stories of hardship and hope told by cashiers, bus drivers, and business owners; politicians and aid providers; and, most important, aid recipients themselves. Together these stories reveal how the seemingly innocent act of storytelling can create powerful stereotypes that shape public policy. They also showcase redemptive counter-narratives that offer hope for a more accurate and empathetic view of poverty in America today. Overthrowing the Queen tackles perceptions of welfare recipients while proposing new approaches to the study of oral narrative that extend far beyond the study of welfare, poverty, and social justice.
Download or read book Poorly Understood written by Mark Robert Rank and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if the idealized image of American societya land of opportunity that will reward hard work with economic successis completely wrong? Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all types of myths and misinformation to gain traction and legitimacy. Poorly Understood is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty. Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock powerfully demonstrate that the realities of poverty are much different than the myths; indeed in many ways they are more disturbing. The idealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, with hard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. But what if this picture is wrong? What if poverty is an experience that touches the majority of Americans? What if hard work does not necessarily lead to economic well-being? What if the reasons for poverty are largely beyond the control of individuals? And if all of the evidence necessary to disprove these myths has been readily available for years, why do they remain so stubbornly pervasive? These are much more disturbing realities to consider because they call into question the very core of America's identity. Armed with the latest research, Poorly Understood not only challenges the myths of poverty and inequality, but it explains why these myths continue to exist, providing an innovative blueprint for how the nation can move forward to effectively alleviate American poverty.
Download or read book Ineligible written by Krys Maki and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-10T00:00:00Z with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive examination of welfare state surveillance and regulation of single mothers in Ontario.
Download or read book Cheating Welfare written by Kaaryn S Gustafson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-07-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last three decades, welfare policies have been informed by popular beliefs that welfare fraud is rampant. As a result, welfare policies have become more punitive and the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system have blurred—so much so that in some locales prosecution caseloads for welfare fraud exceed welfare caseloads. In reality, some recipients manipulate the welfare system for their own ends, others are gravely hurt by punitive policies, and still others fall somewhere in between. In Cheating Welfare, Kaaryn S. Gustafson endeavors to clear up these gray areas by providing insights into the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare. She shows why cheating is all but inevitable—not because poor people are immoral, but because ordinary individuals navigating complex systems of rules are likely to become entangled despite their best efforts. Through an examination of the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud, which she bases on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.
Download or read book Welfare for the Rich written by Phil Harvey and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welfare for the Rich is the first book to describe and analyze the many ways that federal and state governments provide handouts—subsidies, grants, tax credits, loan guarantees, price supports, and many other payouts—to millionaires, billionaires, and the companies they own and run. Many journalists, scholars, and activists have focused on one or more of these dysfunctional programs. A few of the most egregious examples have even become famous. But Welfare for the Rich is the first attempt to paint a comprehensive, easily accessible picture of a system largely designed by the richest Americans—through lobbyists, lawyers, political action committees, special interest groups, and other powerful influencers—with the specific goal of making sure the government keeps wealth and power flowing from the many to the few.
Download or read book The Queen written by Josh Levin and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography In this critically acclaimed true crime tale of "welfare queen" Linda Taylor, a Slate editor reveals a "wild, only-in-America story" of political manipulation and murder (Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning author). On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship -- after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody -- not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan -- seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an exposé of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. The Queen tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name. "In the finest tradition of investigative reporting, Josh Levin exposes how a story that once shaped the nation's conscience was clouded by racism and lies. As he stunningly reveals in this "invaluable work of nonfiction," the deeper truth, the messy truth, tells us something much larger about who we are (David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).
Download or read book When Welfare Disappears written by Kenneth J. Neubeck and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking new book offers a history of welfare, an accurate portrayal of welfare recipients and an understanding of the diverse characteristics of lone-mother-headed families affected by welfare reform. Through detailed research, award-winning author Kenneth J. Neubeck offers a unique comparison of other industrialized nation's welfare policies compared to ours, and presents a new argument for curtailing the end of welfare as we know it: the case for respecting economic human rights.
Download or read book Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform written by Sanford F. Schram and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's hard to imagine discussing welfare policy without discussing race, yet all too often this uncomfortable factor is avoided or simply ignored. Sometimes the relationship between welfare and race is treated as so self-evident as to need no further attention; equally often, race in the context of welfare is glossed over, lest it raise hard questions about racism in American society as a whole. Either way, ducking the issue misrepresents the facts and misleads the public and policy-makers alike. Many scholars have addressed specific aspects of this subject, but until now there has been no single integrated overview. Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform is designed to fill this need and provide a forum for a range of voices and perspectives that reaffirm the key role race has played--and continues to play--in our approach to poverty. The essays collected here offer a systematic, step-by-step approach to the issue. Part 1 traces the evolution of welfare from the 1930s to the sweeping Clinton-era reforms, providing a historical context within which to consider today's attitudes and strategies. Part 2 looks at media representation and public perception, observing, for instance, that although blacks accounted for only about one-third of America's poor from 1967 to 1992, they featured in nearly two-thirds of news stories on poverty, a bias inevitably reflected in public attitudes. Part 3 discusses public discourse, asking questions like "Whose voices get heard and why?" and "What does 'race' mean to different constituencies?" For although "old-fashioned" racism has been replaced by euphemism, many of the same underlying prejudices still drive welfare debates--and indeed are all the more pernicious for being unspoken. Part 4 examines policy choices and implementation, showing how even the best-intentioned reform often simply displaces institutional inequities to the individual level--bias exercised case by case but no less discriminatory in effect. Part 5 explores the effects of welfare reform and the implications of transferring policy-making to the states, where local politics and increasing use of referendum balloting introduce new, often unpredictable concerns. Finally, Frances Fox Piven's concluding commentary, "Why Welfare Is Racist," offers a provocative response to the views expressed in the pages that have gone before--intended not as a "last word" but rather as the opening argument in an ongoing, necessary, and newly envisioned national debate. Sanford Schram is Visiting Professor of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Joe Soss teaches in the Department of Government at the Graduate school of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, D.C. Richard Fording is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky.
Download or read book The Human Cost of Welfare written by Phil Harvey and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resource added for the Psychology (includes Sociology) 108091 courses.
Download or read book The Delegated Welfare State written by Kimberly J. Morgan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are so many American social programs delegated to private actors? And what are the consequences for efficiency, accountability, and the well-being of beneficiaries? The Delegated Welfare State examines the development of the American welfare state through the lens of delegation: how policymakers have avoided direct governmental provision of benefits and services, turning to non-state actors for the governance of social programs. Utilizing case studies of Medicare and the 2009-10 health care reform, Morgan and Campbell argue that the prevalence of delegated governance reflects the powerful role of interest groups in American politics, the dominance of Congress in social policymaking, and deep contradictions in American public opinion. Americans want both social programs and small government, leaving policy makers in a bind. Contracting out public programs to non-state actors masks the role of the state and enlists private allies who push for passage. Although delegated governance has been politically expedient, enabling the growth of government programs in an anti-government political climate, it raises questions about fraud, abuse, administrative effectiveness, and accountability. In probing both the causes and consequences of delegated governance, The Delegated Welfare State offers a novel interpretation of both American social welfare politics and the nature of the American state.
Download or read book The Other Welfare written by Edward D. Berkowitz and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Other Welfare offers the first comprehensive history of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), from its origins as part of President Nixon's daring social reform efforts to its pivotal role in the politics of the Clinton administration. Enacted into law in 1972, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) marked the culmination of liberal social and economic policies that began during the New Deal. The new program provided cash benefits to needy elderly, blind, and disabled individuals. Because of the complex character of SSI-marking both the high tide of the Great Society and the beginning of the retrenchment of the welfare state-it provides the perfect subject for assessing the development of the American state in the late twentieth century. SSI was launched with the hope of freeing welfare programs from social and political stigma; it instead became a source of controversy almost from its very start. Intended as a program that paid uniform benefits across the nation, it ended up replicating many of the state-by-state differences that characterized the American welfare state. Begun as a program intended to provide income for the elderly, SSI evolved into a program that served people with disabilities, becoming a primary source of financial aid for the de-institutionalized mentally ill and a principal support for children with disabilities. Written by a leading historian of America's welfare state and the former chief historian of the Social Security Administration, The Other Welfare illuminates the course of modern social policy. Using documents previously unavailable to researchers, the authors delve into SSI's transformation from the idealistic intentions of its founders to the realities of its performance in America's highly splintered political system. In telling this important and overlooked history, this book alters the conventional wisdom about the development of American social welfare policy.
Download or read book Criminalizing Race Criminalizing Poverty written by Kiran Mirchandani and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The criminalization and penalization of poverty through increased surveillance and control of welfare recipients in recent years has led many poverty advocates to claim that "a war against the poor" is currently in progress. The authors argue that poor people in general and people of colour in particular are most often the casualties in governments' desire to roll back the welfare state. Relying on myths and stereotypes about racial difference, the enforcement and policing of welfare fraud policies constructs people of colour and the poor as potential "cheaters" and "abusers" of the system. This has allowed for the stigmatizing and discriminatory treatment of these people to persist unchallenged within the welfare system. Book jacket.
Download or read book Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State written by Trine Øland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State provides an ambiguous yet disturbing portrait of the inner workings of the Danish welfare state and its implications in a context of globalisation and migration. Through a sociological interview-study with welfare workers, this book describes how processes of othering are undercurrents of welfare work. The processes construct immigrants and refugees as a kind of people who are not only culturally different but also behind, deficient and weak, and thus assigned the potential to benefit from welfare work. These processes are designated to advance a racial welfare dynamic of remedial circularity which keeps the immigrant and refugee on the threshold of modern living and democracy. It is thus depicted how welfare work is intertwined not with a biological framework but with a cultural framework naturalising and ontologising cultural differences. The book examines how welfare work tends to appreciate immigrants and refugees as dislocated people with a cultural lack and how it abides by the dictums of civilising expansions and humanitarian imperialism within the modern state. This book will be useful for every scholar who wants to reconsider and think differently about how the welfare state is going to proceed in a global society.
Download or read book Overcoming Welfare written by James L. Payne and published by . This book was released on 1998-05-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses why welfare reform does not work and offers strategies for restructuring the system so that it benefits Americans and encourages them to try and help themselves.
Download or read book Welfare Racism written by Kenneth J. Neubeck and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welfare Racism analyzes the impact of racism on US welfare policy. Through historical and present-day analysis, the authors show how race-based attitudes, policy making, and administrative policies have long had a negative impact on public assistance programs. The book adds an important and controversial voice to the current welfare debates surrounding the recent legilation that abolished the AFDC.
Download or read book The Welfare of Syrian Refugees written by Paolo Verme and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book focuses on the largest refugee crisis of our time: the Syrian refugee crisis. It exploits a wealth of survey and registry data on Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon to assess their poverty and vulnerability status, understand the predictors of these statuses, evaluate the performance of existing policies toward refugees, and determine the potential for alternative policies. Findings point to a complex situation. In the absence of humanitarian assistance, poverty is extremely high among refugees. Current policies including cash transfers and food vouchers are effective in reducing poverty but they remain short of providing economic inclusion and self-reliance of refugees. A shift toward economic inclusion and self-reliance would require a different humanitarian and development paradigm, one that focuses on growth policies for areas affected by refugees where the target population is constituted by refugees and hosting populations alike. This joint study by the World Bank Group and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helps bridge the historical divide between humanitarian and development work by providing practical solutions for assisting refugees in the short, medium and long-term and to prevent the irreversible loss of social and human capital typically associated with prolonged refugee crises.
