Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The state of poverty: TANF recipients; 3. The response to poverty and inequality: the welfare state; 4. Demonizing the single-mother family: the path to welfare reform; 5. The welfare bureaucracy; 6. Work and the low-wage labor market: mothers and children; 7. Welfare reform and moral entrepreneurship: promoting marriage and responsible parenthood, and preventing teenage pregnancy; 8. Addressing poverty and inequality.

Promotional Information

This book challenges the assumption of the decline of welfare.

About the Author

Joel F. Handler has been a Professor of Law, specializing in social welfare law and policy, poverty, welfare bureaucracies, and comparative welfare states. He has published several books and articles, has won the American Political Science Association prize for the best book in U.S. National Policy (1997) and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has lectured in Europe, Israel, South America, and Asia. Yeheskel Hasenfeld is a Professor of Social Welfare. His research focuses on the dynamic relations between social welfare policies, the organizations that implement these policies and the people who use their services. He has written extensively on human service organizations, the implementation of welfare reform, and the non-profit sector. His book on Mobilizing for Peace won the 2003 Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize. He is a visiting scholar at several universities in Israel, Japan and Singapore.

Reviews

"This book challenges the conventional wisdom that welfare reform "worked." Handler and Hasenfeld, well-known experts in this field, contest that view, bringing to bear a wealth of data on poverty, inequality, and welfare policy. They conclude that welfare reform was built around "myths" regarding the individual deviance of the poor. Instead, they argue that structural conditions in society and the economy are the underlying sources of poverty and inequality and must be addressed with new policy solutions. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with these crucial issues." Evelyn Z. Brodkin, Associate Professor, School of Social Service Administration, The University of Chicago "This is an enormously valuable work, bringing together historical perspective, extensive knowledge and a wide range of research findings in support of a forceful argument that our nation needs to move beyond debates about welfare reform and make a major commitment to addressing poverty and inequality." Mark Greenberg, Executive Director, Task Force on Poverty, Center for American Progress "There is a broad consensus across most of the political spectrum that the 1996 welfare reform successfully ended welfare as we knew it -the welfare rolls were cut in half, more single mothers entered the labor force, and child poverty fell modestly. Handler and Hasenfeld challenge this conventional wisdom and emphasize instead that welfare reform is no substitute for antipoverty policies. They propose that government provide a basic income for families with children, reform the low-wage labor market, improve child care and expand community-based services so that we can end poverty as we still know it. Anyone interested in the future of social welfare policy should read this book." Sheldon Danziger, H. J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy, University of Michigan