Download or read book Work Over Welfare written by Ron Haskins and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, Haskins was one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Here, he portrays the political battles that produced the most dramatic overhaul of the welfare system, since its creation as part of the New Deal.
Download or read book Oversight of Welfare Reform written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Human Resources and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Both Hands Tied written by Jane L. Collins and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both Hands Tied studies the working poor in the United States, focusing in particular on the relation between welfare and low-wage earnings among working mothers. Grounded in the experience of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin, it tells the story of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules—and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid. Jane L. Collins and Victoria Mayer here examine the situations of these women in light of the 1996 national Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and other like-minded reforms—laws that ended the entitlement to welfare for those in need and provided an incentive for them to return to work. Arguing that this reform came at a time of gendered change in the labor force and profound shifts in the responsibilities of family, firms, and the state, Both Hands Tied provides a stark but poignant portrait of how welfare reform afflicted poor, single-parent families, ultimately eroding the participants’ economic rights and affecting their ability to care for themselves and their children.
Download or read book Generation Unbound written by Isabel V. Sawhill and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change "drifters" into "planners." In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts "planners," who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with "drifters," who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.
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 Immigrants Welfare Reform and the Poverty of Policy written by Philip Kretsedemas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many respects, the United States remains a nation of immigrants. This is the first book length treatment of the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on a wide range of immigrant groups in North America. Contributors to the book draw on ethnographic fieldwork, government data, and original survey research to show how welfare reform has reinforced socio-economic hardships for working poor immigrants. As the essays reveal, reform laws have increased the social isolation of poor immigrant households and discouraged large numbers of qualified immigrants from applying for health and welfare services. All of the articles highlight the importance of examining federal policy guidelines in conjunction with local enforcement policies, labor market dynamics, and immigrant attitudes toward government agencies.
Download or read book The New Localism written by Bruce Katz and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Localism provides a roadmap for change that starts in the communities where most people live and work. In their new book, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges. Power is shifting in the world: downward from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities; horizontally from the public sector to networks of public, private and civic actors; and globally along circuits of capital, trade, and innovation. This new locus of power—this new localism—is emerging by necessity to solve the grand challenges characteristic of modern societies: economic competitiveness, social inclusion and opportunity; a renewed public life; the challenge of diversity; and the imperative of environmental sustainability. Where rising populism on the right and the left exploits the grievances of those left behind in the global economy, new localism has developed as a mechanism to address them head on. New localism is not a replacement for the vital roles federal governments play; it is the ideal complement to an effective federal government, and, currently, an urgently needed remedy for national dysfunction. In The New Localism, Katz and Nowak tell the stories of the cities that are on the vanguard of problem solving. Pittsburgh is catalyzing inclusive growth by inventing and deploying new industries and technologies. Indianapolis is governing its city and metropolis through a network of public, private and civic leaders. Copenhagen is using publicly owned assets like their waterfront to spur large scale redevelopment and finance infrastructure from land sales. Out of these stories emerge new norms of growth, governance, and finance and a path toward a more prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive society. Katz and Nowak imagine a world in which urban institutions finance the future through smart investments in innovation, infrastructure and children and urban intermediaries take solutions created in one city and adapt and tailor them to other cities with speed and precision. As Katz and Nowak show us in The New Localism, “Power now belongs to the problem solvers.”
Download or read book Social Welfare Policy written by Jerome H. Schiele and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2011 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the conceptual, historical and practical implications that various social policies in the United States have had on ethnic minorities.
Download or read book The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF Block Grant written by Gene Falk and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant provides federal grants to states for a wide range of benefits, services, and activities. It is best known for helping states pay for cash welfare for needy families with children, but it funds a wide array of additional activities. TANF was created in the 1996 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193). TANF funding and program authority were extended through FY2010 by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171). TANF provides a basic block grant of $16.5 billion to the 50 states and District of Columbia, and $0.1 billion to U.S. territories. Additionally, 17 states qualify for supplemental grants that total $319 million. TANF also requires states to contribute from their own funds at least $10.4 billion for benefits and services to needy families with children -- this is known as the maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirement. States may use TANF and MOE funds in any manner "reasonably calculated" to achieve TANF's statutory purpose. This purpose is to increase state flexibility to achieve four goals: (1) provide assistance to needy families with children so that they can live in their own homes or the homes of relatives; (2) end dependence of needy parents on government benefits through work, job preparation, and marriage; (3) reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and (4) promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Though TANF is a block grant, there are some strings attached to states' use of funds, particularly for families receiving "assistance" (essentially cash welfare). States must meet TANF work participation standards or be penalised by a reduction in their block grant. The law sets standards stipulating that at least 50% of all families and 90% of two-parent families must be participating, but these statutory standards are reduced for declines in the cash welfare caseload. (Some families are excluded from the participation rate calculation.) Activities creditable toward meeting these standards are focused on work or are intended to rapidly attach welfare recipients to the workforce; education and training is limited. Federal TANF funds may not be used for a family with an adult that has received assistance for 60 months. This is the five-year time limit on welfare receipt. However, up to 20% of the caseload may be extended beyond the five years for reason of "hardship", with hardship defined by the states. Additionally, states may use funds that they must spend to meet the TANF MOE to aid families beyond five years. TANF work participation rules and time limits do not apply to families receiving benefits and services not considered "assistance". Child care, transportation aid, state earned income tax credits for working families, activities to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, activities to promote marriage and two-parent families, and activities to help families that have experienced or are "at risk" of child abuse and neglect are examples of such "nonassistance".
Download or read book Critical Social Welfare Issues written by Arthur J Katz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Social Welfare Issues is a collection of lectures by noted social welfare experts that addresses paramount issues facing society and suggests recommendations for positive change. It is a useful handbook for social workers, psychologists, educators, health professionals, and human service administrators and a valuable text for students studying social welfare policy and social work in health care. The result of the Distinguished Lecturers Series instituted at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Critical Social Welfare Issues brings nationally recognized and outstanding social work and allied health care scholars and practitioners together for their views on topics such as: welfare reform and homelessness in the U.S. crisis in child welfare and women as victims the changing structure of African-American families the growing Hispanic population and the unique challenges they face mandatory vs. voluntary HIV testing for newborns the infrastructure of the social work profession the for-profit market system for social work and health care the future for health care professionals de-professionalization in health care professionals and the political process As the Editors explain, Critical Social Welfare Issues addresses “the rapidly changing context in the various fields of practice of professional social work and other health care areas. The crises that are identified are newly emerging and part of a long historical process which has been exacerbated by current political and economic changes and events. . . . The threat currently seems to be coming not only from governmental political forces focused to tax reductions and right wing ideologies but for the first time from the non-government sector, the for-profit market system which is projecting huge profits from health care, education, and corrections among other social welfare arenas.”
Download or read book Welfare reform HHS should exercise oversight to help ensure TANF work participation is measured consistently across states report to the Chairman Subcommittee on Human Resources Committee on Ways and Means House of Representatives written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lifting Up the Poor written by Mary Jo Bane and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003-10-10 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People who participate in debates about the causes and cures of poverty often speak from religious conviction. But those convictions are rarely made explicit or debated on their own terms. Rarely is the influence of personal religious commitment on policy decisions examined. Two of the nation's foremost scholars and policy advocates break the mold in this lively volume, the first to be published in the new Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life. The authors bring their faith traditions, policy experience, academic expertise, and political commitments together in this moving, pointed, and informed discussion of poverty, one of our most vexing public issues. Mary Jo Bane writes of her experiences running social service agencies, work that has been informed by "Catholic social teaching, and a Catholic sensibility that is shaped every day by prayer and worship." Policy analysis, she writes, is often "indeterminate" and "inconclusive." It requires grappling with "competing values that must be balanced." It demands judgment calls, and Bane's Catholic sensibility informs the calls she makes. Drawing from various Christian traditions, Lawrence Mead's essay discusses the role of nurturing Christian virtues and personal responsibility as a means of transforming a "defeatist culture" and combating poverty. Quoting Shelley, Mead describes theologians as the "unacknowledged legislators of mankind" and argues that even nonbelievers can look to the Christian tradition as "the crucible that formed the moral values of modern politics." Bane emphasizes the social justice claims of her tradition, and Mead challenges the view of many who see economic poverty as a biblical priority that deserves "preference ahead of other social concerns." But both assert that an engagement with religious traditions is indispensable to an honest and searching debate about poverty, policy choices, and the public purposes of religion.
Download or read book The End of Welfare written by Michael Tanner and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 1996 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues for the abolishment of the current system.
Download or read book The Politics of Policy Change written by Daniel Béland and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For generations, debating the expansion or contraction of the American welfare state has produced some of the nation's most heated legislative battles. Attempting social policy reform is both risky and complicated, especially when it involves dealing with powerful vested interests, sharp ideological disagreements, and a nervous public. The Politics of Policy Change compares and contrasts recent developments in three major federal policy areas in the United States: welfare, Medicare, and Social Security. Daniel Béland and Alex Waddan argue that we should pay close attention to the role of ideas when explaining the motivations for, and obstacles to, policy change. This insightful book concentrates on three cases of social policy reform (or attempted reform) that took place during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Béland and Waddan further employ their framework to help explain the meaning of the 2010 health insurance reform and other developments that have taken place during the Obama presidency. The result is a book that will improve our understanding of the politics of policy change in contemporary federal politics.
Download or read book Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty written by Kathleen Ann Pickering and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted, policy makers, agency administrators, community activists, and academics from a broad range of disciplines have debated and researched the implications of welfare reform in the United States. Most of the attention, however, has focused on urban rather than rural America. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty examines welfare participants who live in chronically poor rural areas of the United States where there are few job opportunities and poor systems of education, transportation, and child care. Kathleen Pickering and her colleagues look at welfare reform as it has been experienced in four rural and impoverished regions of the United States: American Indian reservations in South Dakota, the Rio Grande region, Appalachian Kentucky, and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout these areas the rhetoric of reform created expectations of new opportunities to find decent work and receive education and training. In fact, these expectations have largely gone unfulfilled as welfare reform has failed to penetrate poor areas where low-income families remain isolated from the economic and social mainstream of American society. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty sheds welcome light on the opportunities and challenges that welfare reform has imposed on low-income families situated in disadvantaged areas. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research, it will be an excellent guide for scholars and practitioners alike seeking to address the problem of poverty in rural America.
Download or read book Government Governance and Welfare Reform written by Alberto Brugnoli and published by Edward Elgar Pub. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Alberto Brugnoli and Alessandro Colombo have put together an important collection of essays on government and governance in Italy and Britain. This richly documented comparative study proposes to answer two key questions: how does the change from government to governance emerge, and what enables this transformation to survive and even to displace State-centric solutions to public policy issues? the book will be a milestone in highlighting the distinctive and original role of the principle of subsidiarity, in examining and assessing governance regimes, their philosophy and their organizational choices and in linking subsidiarity with the prospects of freedom, responsibility and self-governing societies in the modern world. I know of no other book that brings the principle of subsidiarity to the frontier of the most current research in social science.' - Filippo Sabetti, McGill University, Canada
Download or read book Welfare reform interim report on potential ways to strengthen federal oversight of state and local contracting written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
