In this issue. . . Washington, DC 20005-4701...Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan 111 David Jacobs...

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In this issue. . .

A Symposium on Welfare

Nancy Naples Welfare Research after the Cultural Turn: Norms, Ideology, and Discourse

Andrew J. Cherlin Can the Left Learn the Lessons of Welfare Reform?Isaac Martin Rethinking Welfare Reform

Reviewing the following books:

Welfare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change, by Jeffrey Grogger andLynn A. Karoly; Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality,

by Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld; The Promise of WelfareReform: Political Rhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in the Twenty-First

Century, edited by Keith M. Kilty and Elizabeth A. Segal; The Institutional Logic of Welfare Attitudes: How Welfare Regimes InfluencePublic Support, by Christian Albrekt Larsen; Working Mothers and theWelfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western

Europe and the United States, by Kimberly J. Morgan; When WelfareDisappears: The Case for Economic Human Rights, by

Kenneth J. Neubeck; Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, andGlobalization, by Sanford F. Schram

Review Essays

Darnell F. Hawkins Race and Crime Revisited: Old Questions, New InsightsThe Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race,Ethnicity, and Crime in America, edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan

David Jacobs Politics, Racial Inequality, and PunishmentThe Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of MassIncarceration in America, by Marie GottschalkPunishment and Inequality in America, by Bruce Western

Katherine Beckett Democracy and its DiscontentsThe Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons, by Elizabeth A. HullLocked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement andAmerican Democracy, by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen

Toolkit Essay

Lyn H. Lofland An Excess of Riches?The Sage Handbook of Fieldwork, edited byDick Hobbs and Richard WrightA Handbook for Social Science Field Research: Essays& Bibliographic Sources on Research Design andMethods, edited by Ellen Perecman and Sara R. Curran

3321 Contemporary Soc 1/25/08 9:16 AM

March 2008 Volume 37 Number 2

ContemporarySociology

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

ContemporarySociology

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

EDITORSValerie JennessDavid A. Smith

Judith Stepan-Norris

MANAGING EDITORJenny Fan

ASSISTANT EDITORSSteven A. Boutcher

Nathanael Matthiesen

Ben Nathan AggerUniversity of Texas, Arlington

Edwin AmentaUniversity of California,Irvine

Stanley BaileyUniversity of California,Irvine

Maria CharlesUniversity of California,San Diego

Mary DanicoCalifornia State PolytechnicUniversity, Pomona

Hector DelgadoUniversity of La Verne

Mario DianiUniversity of Trento (Italy)

Elaine Alma DraperCalifornia State University,Los Angeles

Rebecca J. EricksonThe University of Akron

Katherine FaustUniversity of California,Irvine

Neil FligsteinUniversity of California,Berkeley

Heidi GottfriedWayne State University

Rick GrannisUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Darnell M. HuntUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Larry IsaacVanderbilt University

Shirley A. JacksonSouthern Connecticut StateUniversity

Eun Mee KimEwha Woman’s University

Douglas KlaymanAmerican University

Kenneth C. LandDuke University

Jan LinOccidental College

John R. LoganBrown University

Mansoor MoaddelEastern Michigan University

Andrew NoymerUniversity of California,Irvine

Jen’nan Ghazal ReadUniversity of California,Irvine

J. Timmons RobertsCollege of William and Mary

Beverly SilverJohns Hopkins University

Salvador Vidal-OrtizAmerican University

Tekle WoldemikaelChapman University

EDITORIAL BOARD

University of California, Irvine

LOCKED OUTFelon Disenfranchisement andAmerican Democracy

JEFF MANZA and CHRISTOPHER UGGEN“The United States stands out among allnations in the world for the large numbers of people it incarcerates, andfor then stripping them of the right tovote, sometimes for life. In this brilliantand timely book Manza and Uggenprobe the roots of this phenomenon…and they show us how felon disenfran-chisement continues to distort Americandemocracy.”—Frances Fox Piven2008 paper $18.95

Revised and Expanded Edition

THE GREAT RISK SHIFTThe New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream

JACOB S. HACKER“A powerful and timely account of theforces driving the ascendance of economic insecurity in America… animportant book for anyone concernedabout the continuing vitality of theAmerican dream.”—John Edwards“The essential policy book of the year.”—E.J. Dionne, Washington Post2008 paper $15.95

REASSEMBLINGTHE SOCIALAn Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

BRUNO LATOUR

2007 paper $25.00

BROKERAGE AND CLOSUREAn Introduction to Social Capital

RONALD S. BURT

2007 paper $26.95

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3321 Contemporary Soc 1/25/08 9:16 AM

CONTENTS

vii Editors’ Note Lessons of Welfare Reform?

A Symposium on Welfare

097 Nancy Naples Welfare Research after the Cultural Turn: Norms, Ideology, and DiscourseThe Institutional Logic of Welfare Attitudes: How Welfare Regimes Influence Public Support, by Christian Albrekt LarsenWorking Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politicsof Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States,by Kimberly J. MorganWelfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization,by Sanford F. Schram

101 Andrew J. Cherlin Can the Left Learn the Lessons of Welfare Reform?Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality,by Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel HasenfeldThe Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Realityof Poverty in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Keith M. Kiltyand Elizabeth A. SegalWhen Welfare Disappears: The Case for Economic Human Rights, by Kenneth J. NeubeckWelfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization,by Sanford F. Schram

105 Isaac Martin Rethinking Welfare ReformWelfare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change,by Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn A. KarolyThe Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Realityof Poverty in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Keith M. Kiltyand Elizabeth A. SegalWorking Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politicsof Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States,by Kimberly J. MorganWhen Welfare Disappears: The Case for Economic Human Rights, by Kenneth J. Neubeck

Review Essays

109 Darnell F. Hawkins Race and Crime Revisited: Old Questions, New InsightsThe Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America, edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan

111 David Jacobs Politics, Racial Inequality, and PunishmentThe Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, by Marie GottschalkPunishment and Inequality in America, by Bruce Western

115 Katherine Beckett Democracy and its DiscontentsThe Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons, by Elizabeth A. HullLocked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy, by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen

Author and Title Reviewer

Toolkit Essay

119 Lyn H. Lofland An Excess of Riches?The Sage Handbook of Fieldwork, edited by Dick Hobbs andRichard WrightA Handbook for Social Science Field Research: Essays & Bibliographic Sources on Research Design and Methods, editedby Ellen Perecman and Sara R. Curran

REVIEWS


Inequalities

123 Jane Henrici, ed.Doing Without: Women and Work After Welfare Reform

Lisa D. Brush124 Paul Attewell and David E. Lavin

Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across theGenerations?

Michael Hout125 João H. Costa Vargas

Catching Hell in the City of Angels: Life and Meanings of Blackness in South CentralLos Angeles

Elaine Bell Kaplan126 Kathleen Garces-Foley

Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a MissionRebecca Y. Kim

128 Leela FernandesIndia’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform

Raka Ray129 Robert M. Moore, III

“They Always Said I Would Marry a White Girl”: Coming to Grips with Race inAmerica

Barbara Trepagnier

Intimate Relationships, Family, and Life Course

130 Timothy D. PippertRoad Dogs and Loners: Family Relationships Among Homeless Men

Teresa Gowan132 Andrea J. Baker

Double Click: Romance and Commitment Among Online CouplesEmily Noelle Ignacio

133 Estelle T. LauPaper Families: Identity, Immigration Administration, and Chinese Exclusion

Judith Liu

Work, Organizations, and Markets

135 Anthony J. Mayo, Nitin Nohria, and Laura G. SingletonPaths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership

Anne Fleischer


136 Marvin S. FinkelsteinNet-Works: Workplace Change in the Global Economy: A Critical and PracticalGuide

Preston Rudy137 Sylvia Walby, Heidi Gottfried, Karin Gottschall, and Mari Osawa, eds.

Gendering the Knowledge Economy: Comparative PerspectivesChristine Williams

Cognitions, Emotions, and Identities

138 Anthony R. MawsonMass Panic and Social Attachment: The Dynamics of Human Behavior

Russell R. Dynes139 Edwin Amenta

Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the SoftballDiamonds of Central Park

Gary Alan Fine

Ideology and Cultural Production

141 Patricia Anne MastersThe Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community through Play

Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler142 Anson Shupe

Spoils of the Kingdom: Clergy Misconduct and Religious CommunityAndrew Greeley

Population, Communities, and the Environment

143 Catherine Simpson BuekerFrom Immigrant to Naturalized Citizen: Political Incorporation in the United States

Irene Bloemraad144 Craig A. Parsons and Timothy M. Smeeding, eds.

Immigration and the Transformation of EuropeDavid Cook-Martín

146 Havidán Rodriguez, Enrico L. Quarantelli and Russell R. Dynes, eds.Handbook of Disaster Research

Stephen R. Couch147 Brian N. Fry

Nativism and Immigration: Regulating the American DreamMichael S. Rodriguez

148 Bella DePauloSingled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still LiveHappily Ever After

Rachel E. Sullivan150 Winston Tseng

Immigrant Community Services in Chinese and Vietnamese EnclavesHung Cam Thai

Politics and the State

151 Jason HackworthThe Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism

Richard Child Hill


152 Christian JoppkeSelecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State

Thomas Janoski154 Jonathan Eastwood

The Rise of Nationalism in VenezuelaEduardo Posada-Carbó

155 John Higley and Michael BurtonElite Foundations of Liberal Democracy

William R. Schonfeld

Social Control, Deviance, and Law

157 Jerry M. LewisSports Fan Violence in North America

B. E. Aguirre158 Roger A. Salerno

Sociology Noir: Studies at the University of Chicago in Loneliness, Marginality andDeviance, 1915–1935

John F. Galliher159 Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington, and Alfred Blumstein

Key Issues in Criminal Career Research: New Analyses of the Cambridge Study inDelinquent Development

Ross Macmillan161 Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing CaliforniaAlan Mobley

162 Kyung-Seok ChooGangs and Immigrant Youth

Victor Rios

Social Movements

163 Brian MartinJustice Ignited: The Dynamics of Backfire

Joel Best164 Charles Tilly

Regimes and RepertoiresRoberto Franzosi

166 Michael LieneschIn the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of theAntievolution Movement

Rory McVeigh167 Peniel E. Joseph

Waiting ‘Til The Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in AmericaCharles M. Payne

Health, Illness, and Medicine

168 Gregory L. WeissGrass Roots Medicine: The Story of America’s Free Health Clinics

Peter Conrad169 Chien-Juh Gu

Mental Health among Taiwanese Americans: Gender, Immigration, andTransnational Struggles

Linda Morrison


171 Virginia Adams O’ConnellGetting Cut: Failing to Survive Surgical Residency Training

Robert Zussman

Theory, Epistemology, and Methodology

172 Mauro F. GuillénThe Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical: Scientific Management and the Rise ofModernist Architecture

Diane E. Davis174 Keith Doubt

Understanding Evil: Lessons From BosniaLaura Desfor Edles

175 Hans Henrik BruunScience, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology

Lutz Kaelber176 Rick Tilman

Thorstein Veblen and the Enrichment of Evolutionary NaturalismStjepan G. Mestrovic

178 Mohamed Cherkaoui, translated by Peter HamiltonGood Intentions: Max Weber and the Paradox of Unintended Consequences

Stephen P. Turner

Global Dynamics and Social Change

179 J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. ParksA Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy

Dana R. Fisher180 David Laibman

Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human PotentialPatrick D. Nolan

181 Tony WatersThe Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace

Christian Zlolniski

TAKE NOTE 184

COMMENT AND REPLY 191

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED 193

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In his State of the Union address in January1996, President Bill Clinton famously de-clared that “the era of big government isover” (http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/other/sotu.html). In the rest of his speech,the President laid out an agenda for balanc-ing the budget and cutting government ser-vices, while also touting the importance of“personal responsibility” as a solution for se-rious social problems. At the top of his agen-da was a proposal for “sweeping welfare re-form” that would include strict time limits oneligibility, tough work requirements for re-cipients, and make ending “welfare depen-dency” the top priority. Later that year, thePersonal Responsibility and Work Opportuni-ty Act (PRWORA) was passed by Congressand signed into law by President Clinton.

This version of “welfare reform” was justthe latest in a series of attempts to addressthe government system that provided aid topoor families with dependent children. Wel-fare was originally a prime target for conser-vative politicians eager to mobilize a frustrat-ed white middle class who believed the “un-deserving” poor were getting special benefitsand spending “their” tax dollars (for the his-torical origins of this “backlash” against wel-fare mothers see Reese 20051). On the cam-paign trail, Ronald Reagan told vaguely racistapocryphal stories of “Welfare Queens” whomanaged to buy “Cadillacs” by gaming thewelfare system. By the 1980s, increasingnumbers of mainstream politicians on bothsides of the aisle championed changes in thewelfare system. This was part of a broaderpush for government retrenchment linked toan ascendant ideology that promoted thevirtue of unfettered “free markets,” lower tax-es, individual responsibility, and smaller gov-ernment. While this ideological shift was, ar-guably, most virulent in the United States, itwas part of a wider worldwide call for the

dismantling of “welfare states” in the face ofglobal economic competition. This trend wasperhaps epitomized by British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher’s declaration that econom-ic globalization means “there is no alterna-tive” to this broad government retrenchment.

We invited three well-known scholarswho have focused on welfare issues in theirown research (Nancy Naples, Andrew Cher-lin, and Isaac Martin) to comment on a seriesof new books on this issue. Choosing to dis-cuss distinct, but overlapping books, theseessay writers address the issue of U.S. welfarereform in rather different ways. Nancy Napleslaunches her essay with a brief discussion of“American exceptionalism” as it applies towelfare and work-family policy. The focus(in this essay and the books covered) is ex-plicitly historical and comparative; one bigconcern is whether European countries witha long history of more inclusive welfarestates “face an American future” as they dealwith the pressures of globalization. Naplesassumes that more just, gender-sensitive, andcompassionate work-family and welfare poli-cies are desirable and worries about the ex-tent to which both globalizing discourses andpolitical/economic power mitigate againstthat outcome. But the world is complicated.The rich comparative research of the booksshe discusses illustrate distinct national paths,and Naples argues for more multi-method-ological historical and comparative researchon this crucial topic.

Andrew Cherlin takes a much narrowerfocus in his essay. He zeroes in on Clinton’s1996 welfare reform (PRWORA) and recountshow countless liberal social scientists (in-cluding himself!) made dire predictions aboutits effect (claiming it would either changenothing or create mass suffering). Instead,Cherlin cites data that “the welfare rolls havebeen cut in half, the percentage of singlemothers working for pay has increasedsharply, and yet the percentage of children inpoverty has declined.” With these facts inhand, he notes that the books he reviews areall highly critical of welfare reform and seem

EDITORS’ NOTE:LESSONS OF WELFARE REFORM?

vii Contemporary Sociology 37, 2

1 Reese, Ellen. 2005. Backlash Against WelfareMothers: Past and Present. Berkeley, CA: Uni-versity of California Press.

viii–Editors’ Note

unwilling to admit that their former predic-tions were wrong. While he acknowledgesthat some of the authors do raise importantissues—for example, about the quality andpay of the jobs single mothers are forced totake and the lack of child care and health in-surance, etc., he nonetheless argues that theirleft ideological blinders make it difficult forthem to do the kind of empirical researchthat needs to be done to determine why theClinton reforms were successful in some cru-cial and consequential ways. Cherlin admitsthat many academics may not agree with hisview that the post-PRWORA decade has ledto many positive outcomes for poor womenand children in the U.S. However, his maincall is for more serious, unbiased research toexplain these anomalies.

Isaac Martin takes a broader view of wel-fare reform that provides an interesting bal-ance to a number of Cherlin’s points. He se-lected two books that Cherlin did not discussin detail: one comparing the U.S. and Europethat both he and Naples find extremely use-ful (by sociologist Kimberly Morgan), theother an assessment of the impact of welfarereform over the past decade written by non-sociologists using economic modeling (byJeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly). As a result,Martin’s view of the impacts of welfare re-form are much more nuanced and critical.Specifically, his prognostication for the futureis that we may be “stuck with our currentwork-based welfare regime for the foresee-able future.” Martin acknowledges that wetend to think of “welfare reform” as a singlepiece of legislation, the PRWORA, but hewants to take a longer-term, more holistic ap-proach, that places this bill in the context ofother changes and as part of what he terms“a broader policy regime shift.” He alsopoints out that social scientists often focus onthe way specific provisions of legislation likePRWORA impacted individuals in variousmeasurable ways, when we should be exam-ining societal or systemic effects. In this re-gard, he claims that the Grogger and Karolyanalysis shows that, despite large gains inemployment, there is little evidence of anychange in overall family income or poverty.He sees Morgan’s useful emphasis on con-stellations of policy instruments in Europeancountries as a commendable way to ap-proach the U.S. case. Here, Martin empha-

sizes that just prior to the enactment of thePRWORA, a program providing earned in-come tax credit to the working poor was ex-panding and many new “living wage” poli-cies was put in place at local levels. In thiscontext, he proposes estimating the impactsof these policy changes in conjunction withone another, arguing that this set of changes,considered as a package, effectively reorient-ed U.S. policy toward work-based provisionsfor the poor. As a result, Martin argues thatinequality and social exclusion within thelow-income population may have increased,because those who are able to participate informal labor markets are advantaged overthose who cannot. And he believes that a va-riety of political factors may conspire to makethis a permanent policy reorientation. Martin,like Naples, is skeptical about the prospectsfor welfare restoration via human rights ac-tivism and argues that those concerned withjustice for the poor may need to take differ-ent tacks.

Our essayists (and the books they review)have distinct takes on welfare reform andwork-family policy. But they do agree thatsociologists should have a great deal to sayabout this vital public issue and call for a re-vitalized research agenda in this area.

This issue of CS also includes four otherfeatured essays. Three of them are related toissues of crime and punishment in the Unit-ed States: Darnell Hawkins discusses an im-portant edited book on race and crime,David Jacobs’s essay discusses two books onthe politics and inequalities of punishment(incarceration and the death penalty), andKatherine Beckett’s essay reviews two booksthat address the controversy over felon dis-enfranchisement. The final contribution ispart of our new “Toolkit” series of method-ological essays: in it, Lyn Lofland provides alively assessment of two edited volumes onfieldwork/field research. Beginning with thisissue, CS will have a section in the frontfeaturing books pertaining to sociologicalmethods. We look forward to bringing youinnovative and interesting books that will behelpful in research.

Valerie JennessDavid A. Smith

Judith Stepan-NorrisUniversity of California, Irvine

[email protected]

Contemporary Sociology 37, 2

The subject of American exceptionalism haslong held the interest of academics and poli-cy makers interested in the origins and de-velopment of the welfare state. The threebooks I reviewed are also concerned withU.S. exceptionalism, although the authorsdisagree about whether or not, in fact, theU.S. is exceptional in its approach to welfareand work-family policy. The books examinehow institutional logic (Larsen), religious ide-ology (Morgan), and discourse (Schram)shape public attitudes towards welfare(Larsen), work-family policy formation (Mor-gan) and implementation, and governance ofwelfare programs (Schram). All three authorstake a long view of the process of policy con-struction but draw on different methods (sur-vey methods, historical comparative meth-ods, and discourse analysis) to make claimsabout the various influences they identify.Each author provides a different vision ofwhat accounts for change over time andwhether or not European countries face anAmerican future. Furthermore, while eachauthor engages with welfare regime theory,they draw different conclusions about its use-fulness in explaining cross-national variation.

Christian Albrekt Larsen’s analysis offersthe most support for welfare regime theory,which he describes in chapter 2. His studywas designed to demonstrate the link be-tween “the macro-structures of welfareregimes” and “the micro-structures of publicopinion towards welfare policy” (p. 2).Larsen draws on two additional theoreticalframeworks, power resource theory and newpolitics theory, to explain cross-national vari-ation in public attitudes towards welfare. Bytaking insights from each of these three ap-proaches, Larsen challenges the argumentsthat low public support for welfare can beexplained by ethnic heterogeneity or by the“culture thesis” that “lower support in the

USA and other liberal regimes is caused by a‘passion for freedom over inequality’” (p. 3).In chapter 3, Larsen describes the differencesin public attitudes across Europe, Canada,Australia, and New Zealand. He links hisanalysis of public attitudes towards welfarepolicy with views on deservingness as ex-pressed by citizens of nations with differentregime characteristics. He utilizes the frameof the “political man perspective” to capturethe type of “reflective individual” whose “at-titudes towards welfare policy are not onlyguided by self-interest or abstract societal val-ues and norms, but also based on concreteperceptions of reality; in this case the per-ceptions of the poor and unemployed” (p. 5).Given this framing I wonder if he believesthat political women would not be as in-clined to beliefs based on perceptions ofreality.

In chapter 4, he examines how differentwelfare regimes shape attitudes towards thepoor and the unemployed. In chapters 5 and

A SYMPOSIUM ON WELFARE

97 Contemporary Sociology 37, 2

Welfare Research after the Cultural Turn: Norms, Ideology, and Discourse

NANCY A. NAPLESUniversity of [email protected]

The Institutional Logic of Welfare Attitudes:How Welfare Regimes Influence PublicSupport, by Christian Albrekt Larsen.Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. 184pp.$89.95 cloth. ISBN: 0754648575.

Working Mothers and the Welfare State:Religion and the Politics of Work-FamilyPolicies in Western Europe and the UnitedStates, by Kimberly J. Morgan. Palo Alto,CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. 264pp.$21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804754149.

Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance,and Globalization, by Sanford F.Schram. Philadelphia, PA: TempleUniversity Press, 2005. 184pp. $22.95paper. ISBN: 9781592133024.

98–Symposium

6, he disaggregates welfare regime type andfocuses on the dimensions of available jobopportunities, ethnic fractionalisation, de-gree of selectivism, and degree of generosi-ty of different welfare states to explain dif-ferences in perceived causes of poverty. Inchapters 6 and 7, Larsen compares the Nor-dic countries to isolate the degree of selec-tivism and degree of generosity from the in-stitutional effects of regime type. As he ex-plains, this allows him to hold constant sig-nificant variables such as religious or ethnicfractionalism. He finds that “the institutionsconnected to the welfare regimes matter”and that this finding “cannot be disproved byreference to differences in culture, dominantwelfare state ideology, and degree of reli-gious, linguistic or ethnic fractionalisation”(p. 109). He also concludes that the rate ofunemployment is associated with the degreeof stigmatization. In chapter 8, Larsen drawson a national sample to further test his theo-retical framework. The concluding chapterfurther highlights the link between regimetype and public belief that the poor are re-sponsible for their poverty.

Kimberly J. Morgan also finds that regimetype is related to patterns in work-familypolicies to a certain extent. However, shehighlights the diversity of policy approachesacross similar regimes. For example, the no-tion of subsidiarity that calls for voluntary or-ganizations, religious institutions, and thefamily to provide support for those in needrather than the state, remains strong in Ger-many and the Netherlands. This approach al-so contributes to the continued dominance ofthe male-breadwinner model of public policyin these countries. In contrast, Sweden hasdeveloped an approach characterized as oneof universal breadwinners with all parentsexpected to participate in the paid labor mar-ket. Morgan also reports that France and Bel-gium differ from other continental Europeancountries in that they offer a mixed model ofwork and family policy, which includes astrong state role in providing education andfamily services and assistance to mothers inthe paid labor market and in the home.

Morgan begins her analysis in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century and argues forthe important role of religious beliefs and re-ligious institutions in shaping the welfarestate. Chapter 1 details four patterns ofchurch-state relations: strong religious-secu-

lar conflict with anticlericalists gaining power(France); strong religious-secular conflictwith religious groups gaining power (Nether-lands); weak conflict due to religious homo-geneity (Sweden); religious diversity and sep-aration of church and strong religiosity in thesociety (U.S.). In nations like France andSweden where the secular state proved dom-inant over religious authorities, the state tookan active role in family policy. In countrieslike the Netherlands and the United States,where social conservatives achieved greaterpolitical influence, traditional gender roleswere upheld through state policy. The earlyinfluence of religion combined with the con-temporary power of religion in the U.S. toshape state responses went well into the1960s and 1970s.

Morgan argues that power resources theo-ry, which highlights the strength of the socialdemocratic parties, fails to explain differentpatterns of mother’s employment policy. Shethen demonstrates the power of gender ide-ologies held by diverse political parties inshaping policy responses. Furthermore, orga-nized religion has been an important force inshaping these political ideologies aboutwomen’s appropriate role in the family andin the paid labor market. In contrast, shenotes that “leftist political power, women’semployment ratios, and feminist organizingall fail—on their own—to explain patterns ofwork-family policies” (p. 20).

Morgan provides a detailed historical ac-count of policy formation in three differenttime periods: the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries (chapter 2), 1945–1975(chapter 3), and the mid-1970s to the present(chapter 4). Chapter 5 focuses on the U.S.and the influence of evangelical and otherconservative religions on work-family poli-cies. She emphasizes that by privileging therole of the private sector, the U.S. approach“has proven politically self-reinforcing” andhas “undermined the advocates for federalfamily polices, who have also faced an ener-gized movement of economic and socialconservatives” (p. 142). Chapter 6 focuses at-tention on the Netherlands where the male-breadwinner model was dominant and fur-thered by societal religiosity, the influence ofthe Christian Democratic Party, and a strongeconomy. However, the rise of secularizationand the increase in women’s employmentduring the 1980s led to changes in political


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parties’ views on the appropriateness ofmothers’ participation in the workforce. Yetdespite these changes in the Netherlands andother Western countries, Morgan argues, “thereligious roots of the welfare state have en-dured and continue to shape both public pol-icy and societal organization” (p. 182).

Sanford Schram’s approach to the ques-tion of U.S. exceptionalism centers the pow-er of discourse to shape policy design andimplementation. He highlights the ways inwhich terms such as self-sufficiency, depen-dency, personal responsibility, asset buildingand labor activation derive from the broaderdiscursive frame of neoliberalism and serveto structure welfare policy. In the first chap-ter, he emphasizes the value of discourseanalysis for revealing how the narrative toldabout globalization can be linked to socialwelfare policy through the discursive frameof neoliberalism. He argues that the story ofglobalization helped produce the grounds forthe retrenchment of the welfare state and re-sulted in the U.S. serving as a model for Eu-ropean and other welfare states. Chapter 2explores the extent to which western Euro-pean welfare states are adopting U.S.-produced globalization discourse and shap-ing their welfare policy changes through thediscourse of welfare dependency. Schramhighlights the link between European policyapproaches, such as calls for labor activationand U.S. workfare policies, but finds, as doMorgan and Larsen, that there is a “lack ofconvergence among European welfare statesin moving toward a more reduced form ofsocial provision in the era of globalization”(p. 20).

In the next three chapters, Schram fore-grounds gender, race, and class as dimen-sions that require sustained attention as theyare less visible in contemporary welfare dis-course. Chapter 3 foregrounds gender in-equalities associated with welfare policy asmothers with young children are now ex-pected to work outside the home. Schramcenters the policy approaches of Sweden andNorway to demonstrate that even in coun-tries with more progressive work-family poli-cies, the issue of gender justice remains illu-sive. He concludes that: “Neither gender-neutral policy nor gender-sensitive policy initself will be sufficient to deconstruct embed-ded gender biases in the broader society”(p. 65). Drawing on feminist welfare state

scholars like Diane Sainsbury, Nancy Fraser,and Ann Orloff, Schram finds Esping-Ander-sen’s efforts to incorporate attention to care-giving in his regime typology to be inade-quate as “women are introduced into theequation .|.|. as workers” and their role ascaregivers is rendered invisible (p. 54). Inchapter 4, Schram explores how welfare pol-icy produces and reproduces racial disadvan-tage. He uses the term, “racial policy regime”to capture how policy implementation ac-tively contributes to “racial hierarchy in soci-ety” (p. 73). Chapter 5 shifts attention to thelimits of asset-building as an approach tofight poverty. Schram focuses specifically onhomeownership for low-income families andargues that, as in earlier culture of povertyapproaches, asset-building places the respon-sibility for poverty on the poor who are saidto lack the discipline to save and managetheir assets. Here, Schram notes the differ-ences in European approaches to poverty,even to asset-building, that are more sup-portive than the U.S. approach and that rec-ognize the continued role of the state in pro-viding assistance to the poor.

In chapter 6, Schram takes a surprisingturn and emphasizes “aphasia” as a modeland methodology for understanding the roleof discourse in contemporary welfare policydesign and implementation. He explains that,in much the same way as people who sufferfrom aphasia have difficulty selecting the ap-propriate words or making the appropriateconnections between words, the dependencydiscourse can be seen as a consequence of“the trauma of confronting our society’s com-plicity in perpetuating the destitution of low-income families” (p. 137). As a consequenceof this trauma, Schram explains, there hasbeen a “shift from talking about poverty tofocusing on the contiguous condition of wel-fare dependency” (p. 137). Schram furtherpoints out how the discourse of dependencyevokes a medicalized framing that calls forprograms that can help “regiment low-in-come parents into the low-wage labor mar-kets of the globalizing economy” (p. 149). Inanother surprising turn, in chapter 7 he askswhether “compassionate liberalism” and a fo-cus on “reducing harm” can help restructurewelfare policy in more caring ways. He ar-gues “that harm reduction reflects an ethicalsensibility” that “reflects a willingness to help


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people live more safely without trying tochange their behavior” (p. 161).

I must admit that it is hard to know howto respond to the contradictions that runthrough and across these three books. Forexample, my surprise in the turn that Schramtakes derives from what I see as an incon-sistency in his powerful use of discourseanalysis to map the relationship betweendiscourses of welfare, neoliberalism, andglobalization and his call for a liberal rhetori-cal intervention. If discourses are iterative, itis unclear how a liberal intervention such asthe one he prescribes can do anything otherthan be reincorporated into the neoliberalagenda. Harm reduction could easily becomethe responsibility of individuals or NGOs orcharitable organizations rather than a respon-sibility of government. In this terrorism-in-flected historical moment, it could easily slideinto another form of social control, much theway we are now expected to limit the liquidswe carry when we fly or report any “suspi-cious” behavior of our fellow passengers.

Can “a politics of compassion” help hu-manize liberal institutions, as Schram claims?Morgan would seem to concur, although sheis a little more tempered in her optimism asshe concludes that “the historical legacies of areticent state in the United States need notpreclude action to improve the well-being offamilies” (p. 192). Morgan and Schram bothencourage the U.S. to look towards Europe forlessons on how to deal with “the contentiouspolitics” of work-family policy (Morgan, p.191) and how to resist “a globalizing discourseof welfare retrenchment” to promote “the ca-pacity of citizens to decide for themselves thepublic policies that best serve their needs”(Schram, p. 42). However, if they are correct intheir separate analyses, then little change canbe expected regardless of how closely the U.S.looks towards Europe.

Combining the three arguments that theearly institutional formation of the welfare state(Larsen), including religious ideology aboutwomen’s proper role in society (Morgan) andthe contemporary power of iterative discursiveframes about the diminishing role of the statein the globalizing economy (Schram), leavesvery little hope that work-family and welfarepolicy can become more compassionate andproduce gender justice, especially under liber-al and conservative regimes. As Larsen empha-sizes, “the institutional set-up of the welfare

regime to a large extent influences the publicperception of poor and unemployed” (p. 142).Possible changes are more likely to includefurther withdrawal of the state from social pro-visioning. For example, in the last section ofhis book, Larsen mentions three trends he be-lieves will likely lead to a decrease in publicsupport for future welfare policy: fiscal limitsor perceptions of fiscal constraints; increase intargeted programs over universalistic ones; andincreased immigration in western countries.

Schram, Morgan and Larsen all emphasizethat, as Schram notes, “Each welfare statemay indeed have its own ‘path dependency’where established ways of making policy inthat country create a precedent for continu-ing to make policy in that way” (p. 65). How-ever, as Schram also notes, globalization dis-course has contributed to some commonshifts in welfare policy. Yet, as Larsen andMorgan point out, these shifts are temperedby the institutional logic and gender ideolo-gies that shape welfare policy in differentcountries and therefore continue to temperhow globalization as discourse and practiceserves to reconstitute public attitudes towardsthe poor and welfare policy. The cultural turnin policy analysis does provide a needed cor-rective to the male worker model that servedas the basis for welfare regime theory, theclass interest based formulation of power re-source theory, and the self-interested politicalman version of new politics theory. Whatthese three books teach us is that there aremany more factors and perspectives we needto include in welfare policy analyses to bet-ter contextualize both the early historical de-velopment of the welfare state and the con-temporary shifts in welfare policy. At the veryleast, a multi-methodological, historical com-parative, and multi-level approach is re-quired. Consequently, we need to collaborateacross disciplines, across countries, andacross theoretical frameworks to enhance ourangle of vision. We must also identify waysto translate desire for a more generous, lessstigmatized, and more equitable welfare stateinto specific political strategies. All three au-thors express such a desire but leave us withlittle practical recommendations for change.Yet their efforts to theorize religious ideolo-gy, public attitudes, and the power of dis-course do offer us new ways to approach thisdaunting task.


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In August, 1996, with the fall election loom-ing, President Bill Clinton signed the mostimportant welfare bill in decades. Named asif by a market-research firm the Personal Re-sponsibility and Work Opportunity Act(PRWORA), but mostly known as “welfare re-form,” it limited the number of years a fami-ly could receive welfare payments to five andrequired that most recipients work. Repre-sentative Charles B. Rangel of New Yorkcalled the legislation a “cruel monstrosity”that constitutes “the most radical and mean-spirited attack against the poor that I havewitnessed during my service in government”(Gray 1996). Peter Edelman, who quit hispost in the Clinton Administration, wrote ofwelfare reform: “It does not promote workeffectively, and it will hurt millions of poorchildren by the time it is fully implemented”(1997).

Academics veered between this positionand the prediction that nothing wouldchange because none of the previous welfarereform efforts had changed anything. Histori-an Michael B. Katz took the former position,calling the bill “draconian” and noting, “Anauthoritative analysis of the bill concludedthat it would push more than 1 million chil-dren into poverty” (Katz 2001: 323). Legaland social policy scholar Joel F. Handler tookthe latter position in a 1995 book, deridingthe “simplistic concept of time-limited wel-fare” (p. 137) as “an old cheap remedy”(p.146). Handler declared PRWORA to be an“impossible, palpably unworkable welfare-to-work scheme .|.|. Jobs will not be avail-able, certainly in the required numbers” (pp.137–38). Moreover, PRWORA, Handler pre-dicted, would be as unsuccessful in changingthe culture of the welfare office as other at-tempts to change welfare had been. He con-cluded:

Basically, then, we can expect the sameresults. As under prior work programs,some recipients will get jobs and somewill be sanctioned, but the vast majoritywill somehow be deferred and life will goon. (P. 146)

But this little-will-change scenario provedto be wrong, as did the prediction of masssuffering. By 2000, the welfare rolls had beencut in half, the percentage of single mothersworking for pay had increased sharply, andyet the percentage of children in poverty haddeclined. To be sure, the welfare reformershad the good fortune of starting their pro-gram during the hot economy of the late1990s. Yet the consensus among economists,liberal and conservative, is that the econom-ic boom was not the sole reason for the dropin the welfare rolls and the increase in em-ployment among single mothers. Rather, theyargue, welfare policy also played a role(Blank and Schmidt 2001). If the hot econo-my were the only reason for the drop in therolls, then one would have expected the rollsto increase again after the boom ended. Sofar, however, that has not happened. Be-tween 2001 and 2004, the number of Tem-


Can the Left Learn the Lessons of Welfare Reform?

ANDREW J. CHERLINJohns Hopkins University

[email protected]

Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty andInequality, by Joel F. Handler andYeheskel Hasenfeld. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press, 2006. 401pp.$29.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521690454.

The Promise of Welfare Reform: PoliticalRhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in theTwenty-First Century, edited by Keith M.Kilty and Elizabeth A. Segal. New York,NY: The Haworth Press, 2006. $34.95paper. ISBN: 9780789029225.

When Welfare Disappears: The Case forEconomic Human Rights, by Kenneth J.Neubeck. New York, NY: Routledge,2006. 207pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN:9780415947800.

Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance,and Globalization, by Sanford F.Schram. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univer-sity Press, 2005. 184pp. $22.95 paper.ISBN: 9781592133024.

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porary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)recipients fell by another 6 percent, eventhough the economy had cooled and unem-ployment had risen. The percentage of chil-dren in poverty increased but was still belowthe level of 1996 (U.S. Department of Healthand Human Services 2006). In addition, theculture of the welfare office appears to havechanged, contrary to Handler’s prediction.Four long-time welfare agency observerswrote, “Yet the rapidity and breadth ofchange has been stunning. State and localhuman service systems may now be one ofthe most quickly changing components ofAmerican governmental institutions” (Gais etal. 2001: 37).

You might expect liberal scholars from so-cial work and sociology to reflect on whytheir predictions were so wrong. But Handlerand his long-time collaborator, YeheskelHasenfeld, are not among them, as their newbook on poverty and welfare in Americashows. Nor does the postmodern social poli-cy scholar Sanford F. Schram, who also pub-lished a book just before PRWORA that gaveno indication of what would soon happen(Schram 1995), try to explain the events inhis new book. Nor is an explanation offeredby the contributors to the volume edited byKeith M. Kilty and Elizabeth A. Segal or bysociologist Kenneth Neubeck. All of thesewriters continue to expand upon their pre-PRWORA arguments as if there were no needto reexamine their previous assumptions.Frances Fox Piven, the doyenne of the left-wing school of welfare analysis, writes dis-missively in a foreword to the Kilty and Segalvolume, “In fact, it takes little in the way ofpolicy innovation to drive the welfare rollsdown and to coerce women into low-wagework” (p. xix), as if everyone on the left hadexpected a 50 percent decline in TANF re-cipients coupled with a reduction in child-hood poverty.

Handler and Hasenfeld acknowledge, ofcourse, that the rolls dropped precipitously,but they never examine why. Apparently, thisimpossible, palpably unworkable scheme justhappened to work, and no further discussionis needed. They note the many changes inwelfare offices—the emphasis on immediatejob search, the banners in the waiting areasproclaiming “Your clock is ticking” or “Wel-come job seekers!”, the new job titles such as“self-sufficiency coach” or “family indepen-

dence specialist,” the creation in some juris-dictions of separate career-developmentunits—but nevertheless, they conclude,against their own evidence, that the cultureof most welfare agencies did not reallychange.

Handler and Hasenfeld reserve theirharshest critique for the low-wage labor mar-ket: “For many people, the labor market hasfailed and shows little sign of improvement”(p. 67). Because of the sharp increase in sin-gle mothers’ labor force participation has un-dermined their previous argument that jobssimply are not there in the required numbers,they focus on wages and benefits. Here, theyrightly raise several important issues such asthe low level of the minimum wage, the part-time and unstable nature of many low-wagejobs, the difficulty of finding reliable childcare, and the frequent absence of health in-surance coverage. These problems belie theconservatives’ simplistic conclusion that wel-fare reform has been a success merely be-cause it cut the rolls without engenderingmass hardship. Yet Handler and Hasenfeld’sinterpretation of the evidence is one-sidedhere, as elsewhere, in the book. For instance,they review several studies that find “consid-erable mobility” (p. 243) among low-wageworkers, particularly those who change jobsand then stay with their new employers;however, they then conclude, “employmentmobility is also a myth” (p. 251). Their over-all recommendation is that the governmentshould abolish TANF, allow mothers to stayhome, and, through a combination of em-ployment and cash transfers, ensure that allfamilies have a minimum income of about$35,000 for a family of four.

Schram also acknowledges the caseloaddrop, but runs right by it. His main point, asin his previous book, is that a perverse dis-course about poverty and welfare, one thatshifts the blame from the labor market to themotivations of the poor, shapes American so-cial policy. This is the discourse of “depen-dency,” which narrows the acceptable focusof discussion so that statistical studies of whogoes on and off the rolls crowd out broaderexaminations of the great changes in theworld economy and their implications for theorganization of work. In his new book,Schram enlarges his scope to include the“globalization discourse” not only in the Unit-ed States, but also in Europe. The dominant


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way of talking and thinking about globaliza-tion, he argues, implies that social welfarepolicies that support low-wage workers mustbe weakened to keep Western economiescompetitive in the world economy. In thisdiscourse, the retrenchment of the welfarestate becomes the unfortunate but necessaryconsequence of the movement of productionoverseas. This is not the only way to con-ceive of globalization, Schram maintains. In-stead of accepting this discourse, “[o]ur job.|.|. is to exploit its incompleteness so as tohighlight how it is still possible to choose thewelfare state as an act of social justice”(p. 41).

Schram embraces the perspective of a“new poverty research” (p. 74) that looks be-neath the statistics, places welfare reform in asocial and historical context, and draws un-conventional conclusions. For instance, heargues that the focus on African Americans inthe discourse on welfare both reflects andmaintains the idea of racial differences. Healso discusses the rise of the “care workmovement,” whose advocates argue that thecaring work of mothers is undervalued andinadequately supported. He praises a Norwe-gian model of welfare policy in which workrequirements are coupled with far greatersubsidies to all caregivers of young children.His ideas are thought-provoking and insight-ful, if not always convincing. One might ar-gue, for instance, that the consensus positionon globalization is based not just on discur-sive practice, but also on realities such as themovement of jobs overseas. In any case, hisbook, like Handler and Hasenfeld’s, is in-complete without an analysis on why thehuge decline in the caseload, which he failedto predict, happened.

Michael Reisch, in his chapter in the Kiltyand Segal volume, comes the closest to of-fering a retrospective analysis. He acknowl-edges, “Measured solely in its own terms,welfare reform has been a considerable suc-cess” (p. 73) because of the caseload decline.He then argues that it has also created itsown problems, such as overloading private-sector service organizations who must dealwith those who have not made a successfultransition. Sandra Morgan and her co-authorsdescribe in their chapter the multiple sourcesof the caseload drop, but then correctly ob-serve that women who left welfare oftenfound low-wage jobs that did not raise them

above the poverty line. Most of the othercontributors to the Kilty and Segal volume fo-cus solely on a stinging critique of welfare re-form. Their objective, in the words of the ed-itors (who also edit the Journal of Poverty), is“to challenge the rhetoric that led to welfarereform and to restore some sense of reality tothe claims of those who run our government”(p. 2). Susan T. Gooden and Nakeina E. Dou-glas, for example, probe the sources of racialdisparities in welfare policy.

Reisch argues further that the failure of so-cial work (and, I would add, sociology) to of-fer a reasonable alternative to PRWORA mar-ginalized social workers (and, I would addagain, sociologists) in the policy debates ofthe 1990s. Unfortunately, Neubeck, in achapter in the Kilty and Segal volume and inhis book, recommends political action thatwould, I am sure, guarantee continued mar-ginalization: a movement to condemn theUnited States government for human rightsviolation because of its low level of supportfor the poor. The United States, arguesNeubeck more fully in the book, needs to betaken to task for refusing to ratify treatiessuch as the United Nations InternationalCovenant on Economic, Social, and CulturalRights, which guarantees, among otherthings, “the right of everyone to an adequatestandard of living for himself and his family”(p. 7). It is indeed shameful that the UnitedStates is one of the few countries not to sign.Neubeck describes the activities of a humanrights network whose goals are to get theUnited States to sign the treaties and, moreimportant, to provide enough governmentassistance to end poverty. Yet you don’t haveto be a postmodernist to sense that the dis-course of international human rights, while itmay resonate in European social policy cir-cles and certain segments of the Americanleft, is unlikely to influence policy debates, oreven get a hearing, in the United States.

I, too, thought PRWORA would create adisaster, and I have tried to figure out why itdidn’t. What surprised me most, as I havestudied low-income families under PRWORA,is how Americans seem to derive a sense ofdignity and self-worth from paid work, evenwhen the pay is low. The latent desire forthat dignity is one reason, I think, that thenew rules led large numbers of current orwould-be recipients to seek and take jobs. Idon’t think this sense of self-worth through


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work is merely the product of a perniciouswelfare discourse or the false-consciousnessof the proletariat. Studies show that welfarerecipients were eager to trade welfare forwork and that many who made the transitionspoke positively of increased self-esteem, de-creased depressive symptoms, and greater in-dependence. In fact, Handler and Hasenfeldcite three such studies, even as they con-clude, side-stepping their evidence onceagain, that low-wage work has no benefits atall.

Over the past decade, more jobs also wereavailable than we on the liberal side thought,although many of those jobs did not pay ad-equately and did not provide the other ben-efits—health insurance, child care—thatworkers need. The lesson I draw from wel-fare reform is not that we should advocatefor the right of all low-income mothers tostay home—which is emerging as the left’sfavorite position—but rather that welfare andpoverty policy be conditioned on supportedwork—a job supplemented with greater cashand in-kind government assistance. Appro-priate exemptions should be made for thepresence of very young children, disability,domestic violence, and other mitigating fac-tors. That does not mean giving up the fightfor livable wages, universal health insurance,and better child care options.

Many observers on the left would disagreewith my interpretation of the first post-PRWORA decade. My point is not to imposean interpretation of the unexpected eventsthat occurred, but rather to argue that wemust begin to have one. We need to admitthat our liberal model of the world of welfareand work failed to predict the course of wel-fare reform, and we must seek to learn fromthat failure. Unless we reflect on this turn of

events and modify our thinking appropriate-ly, we will have no credibility in the welfaredebate except among those who alreadyagree with us. The lack of reflection in thesefour books undermines the many validpoints—about low wages, job instability,working conditions, health insurance, andchild care—that the authors make.

ReferencesBlank, Rebecca M., and Lucie Schmidt. 2001.

“Work, Wages, and Welfare.” Pp. 70–96 in TheNew World of Welfare, edited by Rebecca Blankand Ron Haskins. Washington, DC: The Brook-ings Institution.

Edelman, Peter. 1997. “The Worst Thing Bill Clin-ton Has Done.” The Atlantic 279: 43–58.

Gais, Thomas L., Richard P. Nathan, Irene Lurie,and Thomas Kaplan. 2001. “Implementation ofthe Personal Responsibility Act of 1996.” Pp.35–69 in The New World of Welfare, edited byRebecca Blank and Ron Haskins. Washington,DC: The Brookings Institution.

Gray, Jerry. 1996. “Amid Praise, a Peppering ofCriticism and Dismay.” The New York Times,August 1, p. A1. Retrieved December 7, 2007(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06E5DA143FF932A3575BC0A960958260)

Grogger, Jeffrey, and Lynn A. Karoly. 2005. Wel-fare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Handler, Joel F. 1995. The Poverty of Welfare Re-form. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Katz, Michael B. 2001. The Price of Citizenship: Re-defining the American Welfare State. NewYork: Metropolitan Books.

Schram, Sanford F. 1995. Words of Welfare: ThePoverty of Social Science and the Social Scienceof Poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minneso-ta Press.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.2006. “Indicators of Welfare Dependence: An-nual Report to Congress 2006.” WashingtonDC: U.S. Government Printing Office.


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What was welfare reform, and what did it doto social provision in the United States? A les-son we might draw from recent work in po-litical sociology is that welfare reform is fruit-fully conceived as a package of policychanges, just as “welfare” was and is morethan a single program. An interesting impli-cation of this lesson is that welfare reformmay have produced a permanent reorienta-tion of the American system of social provi-sion—from direct cash transfers to indirectprovision through tax and regulatory instru-ments, and from the non-working poor to theworking poor.

This answer is, I think, somewhat uncon-ventional. The usual way of thinking aboutwelfare reform discourages thinking aboutsynthetic policy regimes or systemic changes.The usual way of thinking is instead radical-ly analytic, in three senses.

First, we are used to thinking about wel-fare reform in terms of a single piece of leg-islation: the Personal Responsibility andWork Opportunities Reconciliation Act(PRWORA). This act of Congress explicitlydismantled the federally funded entitlementprogram that Americans called “welfare”—Aid to Families with Dependent Children(AFDC)—and replaced it with a system ofblock grants to the states to pay for Tempo-rary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

Second, the conventional literature evalu-ating the effects of this welfare reform is an-alytic in the sense that it unpacks PRWORAinto its separate provisions, and examines thecausal impact of each provision separately.PRWORA obligated recipients of governmentassistance to seek other sources of support—e.g., by requiring them to seek work in theformal labor market and to comply with childsupport enforcement—before drawing gov-ernment benefits. It altered financial incen-tives to encourage labor market participation.It imposed new time limits on the receipt ofcash assistance. And it was designed explicit-ly to shrink the TANF program over time.PRWORA provided financial incentives forstates to reduce their TANF rolls both direct-

ly, by diverting eligible parents from theprogram, and indirectly, by discouraging thebehaviors (such as getting divorced, or hav-ing children outside of marriage) that mightlead people to become eligible in the firstplace. The conventional policy literatureconceptualizes each of these provisions as adiscrete policy intervention and studies eachin isolation.

Third, most of the evaluation studies areanalytic in the further sense that they limittheir attention to the effects of these provi-sions on individuals, rather than their effectson American society or the welfare system asa whole. Thus, we learn from Jeffrey Groggerand Lynn Karoly’s Welfare Reform—a bril-liant, thorough, and authoritative review ofthis literature—that work requirements, fi-nancial work incentives, and time limits in-crease labor market participation. We learnthat time limits appear to have no measurable


Rethinking Welfare Reform

ISAAC MARTINUniversity of California at San Diego

[email protected]

Welfare Reform: Effects of a Decade ofChange, by Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn A.Karoly. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2005. 352pp. $51.50cloth. ISBN: 9780674018914.

The Promise of Welfare Reform: PoliticalRhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in theTwenty-First Century, edited by Keith M.Kilty and Elizabeth A. Segal. New York,NY: The Haworth Press, 2006. $34.95paper. ISBN: 9780789029225.

Working Mothers and the Welfare State:Religion and the Politics of Work-FamilyPolicies in Western Europe and the UnitedStates, by Kimberly J. Morgan. Palo Alto,CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. 264pp.$21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804754149.

When Welfare Disappears: The Case forEconomic Human Rights, by Kenneth J.Neubeck. New York, NY: Routledge,2006. 207pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN:9780415947800.

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effect on income; that financial work incen-tives increase earnings, but not enough to liftmany people out of poverty; and that workrequirements have “relatively weak effects onfamily income and poverty” (p. 171). Welearn that the new work mandates and timelimits appear to have no effect whatsoever onmarriage or childbearing (pp. 196–97). Thesurprising picture that emerges from the ana-lytic literature is that welfare reform put a lotof people into the labor market but otherwisehad little impact on their material well-beingfor good or ill.

The approach taken by some recentworks of political sociology would suggest adifferent picture. Where the analytic literaturebreaks PRWORA down into its componentprovisions, these recent works would suggestthat we instead aggregate upward, conceiv-ing of PRWORA as one part of a broader pol-icy regime shift. We might then inquire intothe impact of welfare reform as a package.We might think about its effects on the sys-tem of welfare provision rather than merelyits effects on individual recipients. None ofthis is wholly new—sociologists have longargued for considering poor relief as onlyone part of a broader system or regime of so-cial welfare spending. But recently, many po-litical scientists and sociologists have ex-panded their conception of “welfare” evenmore broadly to encompass a host of direct-ly and indirectly subsidized and regulatedarrangements for social provision.

Kimberly Morgan’s Working Mothers andthe Welfare State exemplifies this new, syn-thetic approach to social policy. Morgantakes her object to be “work-family policy.”The term does not refer to a specific legisla-tive instrument; instead, it is a label for apackage of policies that affect how parentsreconcile the care of young children withparticipation in the paid labor force. Work-family policy includes social services such aschild care; labor market regulations, such asthose concerning parental leave; and workincentives embedded in tax and transfer poli-cies. By conceptualizing all of these instru-ments as part of a single policy package,Morgan is able to uncover striking continu-ities across policy domains usually studiedseparately—and to reveal noticeable cross-national differences in work-family policy.She is able to demonstrate that different con-stellations of policy in different countries

emerged from the institutionalization of dif-ferent ideologies during the course of nine-teenth-century conflicts between church andstate. She is also able to show how each sys-tem perpetuates itself over time. In Sweden,for example, several policy instruments workin concert to encourage parents of both gen-ders to combine child care with paid work—and these parents became a constituency foruniversal and egalitarian state provision. Thesame is true in France, though gender-egali-tarian policies are less extensive and the con-stituency for universalism is correspondinglyweaker. In the Netherlands, by contrast,work-family policy provides a variety of sup-ports for mothers who stay at home or enterthe labor market only part-time—and familieswith stay-at-home mothers have become alobby to keep these supports in place. Amer-ican work-family policy encourages parentsto work full-time and meet their child careneeds on the private market, resulting in acoalition of private child-care providers andtax-advantaged upper-income parents whofight the expansion of public child care.

What might we learn by taking an analo-gous approach to welfare reform, conceptu-alizing PRWORA not as an isolated policy in-tervention, but instead as one part of abroader shift in American welfare policy? Wemight notice, for example, that the end of acash entitlement for stay-at-home parents oc-curred simultaneously with a dramatic in-crease in social provision for the workingpoor. The best-known example is the expan-sion in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)that began in 1993. But there were other ex-amples, too. The same Congress that enactedPRWORA also increased the minimum wage.The mid-1990s saw an increase in state andlocal EITCs and state and local minimumwage laws as well. Many of the new labormarket regulations were “living wage” poli-cies that conditioned minimum wages on thereceipt of public subsidies—making the liv-ing wage, at least in part, a public subsidy forlow-wage workers much like the EITC.

These examples suggest that we mightbest understand welfare reform as a systemicshift greater than any individual law. Thetrend looks similar whether we are looking attransfer spending, tax policy, or labor marketregulation: the U.S. moved away from a sys-tem of poor relief for stay-at-home parents,and towards a system of subsidies for low-


Symposium–107

wage workers and their families. To note thiscommon tendency, of course, is not to saythat all of these policies were designed or in-tended as a package. They emerged from dif-ferent actors at different levels of the federalsystem whose interests were sometimes bit-terly opposed. But the result of all of theseforces looks something like a Zeitgeist. Wel-fare for working families was the spirit of thetimes.

This reconceptualization of welfare reformmight shed new light on individual impactsof PRWORA. Rather than treating the EITConly as a statistical nuisance that impairs ourestimates of the impact of TANF work re-quirements, for example, we might try to es-timate the joint impact of these policy instru-ments. We might thereby learn more aboutwhich combinations of policy instruments aremost beneficial to individual low-incomefamilies.

But the greatest payoff from thinking ofwelfare reform synthetically may be new in-sight into system-level impacts. What followsare theoretically informed speculations aboutsuch impacts; they are something less than aset of rigorously derived hypotheses, butsomething better than guesswork.

First, welfare reform may have increasedinequality among the poor. The analytic liter-ature shows that PRWORA has had little neteffect on material well-being, but it employsindividual-level measures of well-being, suchas average income, or absolute poverty rates.Inequality, by contrast, is a relational, system-level outcome. The relevant measures aretherefore indices of income dispersion, or re-lational indices of poverty such as relativepoverty rates. Particularly when we considerPRWORA in combination with minimumwage and EITC laws, it seems probable thatthis legislation increased inequality withinthe low-income population—by supplement-ing earnings for low-income people whohave them, while cutting benefits for low-income people who do not.

Second, welfare reform may also have ex-acerbated the social exclusion of those poorpeople who do not participate in formal la-bor markets. As Kenneth Neubeck points outin his book, When Welfare Disappears, theprovisions of PRWORA affect differentgroups differently. Neubeck offers a series ofsobering and mostly well-informed specula-tions about the “varieties of little-noticed suf-

fering” that PRWORA may have caused forseveral populations that confront special bar-riers to labor market participation—such assurvivors of domestic violence, lesbian moth-ers, mothers with disabilities, rural poor fam-ilies, impoverished immigrants, Native Amer-icans, other people of color, and previouslyincarcerated people. The EITC and the mini-mum wage, meanwhile, have improved thelife chances of many low-income peoplewho do participate in labor markets—therebyperhaps even increasing the isolation andstigmatization of those who do not. Partici-pation in the labor market has always de-fined a salient social boundary in the U.S.,but welfare reform (broadly construed) mayhave increased its salience.

Third, welfare reform may be a permanentreorientation rather than a passing policymood—because we can expect policy feed-back effects that will continue to steer our so-cial policy away from cash assistance forstay-at-home parents, and toward subsidiesfor low-wage workers.

On one hand, PRWORA has weakenedpolitical support for cash assistance for poor,stay-at-home parents. AFDC was always theAchilles heel of the American welfare state,but as Margaret Nelson and Eric Swank re-mind us in their contributions to Keith Kiltyand Elizabeth Segal’s book, The Promise ofWelfare Reform, AFDC did once support in-fluential organizations of beneficiaries thatagitated successfully to expand the rolls andincrease benefits. No longer. As Nelsonpoints out, TANF’s time limits induceturnover, making it harder to organize thispool of beneficiaries, while work require-ments sap time and energy that beneficiariesof an earlier era might have used for activism(p. 58). And it is not just among recipientsthat active support for welfare is eroding. To-day’s welfare rights activists can expect tofind fewer allies in state government. Theshift in funding mechanisms from federalmatching funds to (shrinking) block grantschanges the political calculus for state offi-cials, who must weigh TANF against compet-ing priorities more ruthlessly than they everdid for AFDC.

On the other hand, both PRWORA and thevastly expanded EITC have created new,vested interests in work-related welfare pro-vision. Welfare reform made a market fornew intermediaries—including not-for-profit


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organizations involved in “soft-skills” trainingand job placement, low-wage employerswho hire TANF recipients, and both for-prof-it and not-for-profit tax preparation servicesthat help people qualify for the EITC. Evensome social movement organizations of theleft now dispense EITC-related tax advice asa selective incentive to recruit participants.We can expect that a surprisingly broadcoalition of intermediaries would emerge todefend the EITC if it were targeted for cuts.We might even see some surprising defend-ers of PRWORA’s work requirements.

The beneficiaries of the EITC, too, are aslumbering giant. This tax policy is now byfar the largest income-targeted welfare pro-gram in the U.S.: Neubeck reports in WhenWelfare Disappears that five times as manychildren were lifted above the poverty lineby the EITC as by TANF in 2002 (or wouldhave been, if the official poverty measurecounted tax credits as income) (p. 147). At-tempts to cut this tax credit would imposebig costs on low-income families—much likethe state-level reforms that eliminated tradi-tional property tax breaks in the 1970s andthereby sparked a historic tax revolt. Thebeneficiaries of the EITC are not an orga-nized constituency today, but they might be-come a political force very quickly if theirprogram were threatened. And, as the exam-ple of the tax revolt suggests, it is by nomeans clear that they would be a force forthe left. They might mobilize for tax cuts fa-

vored by the right, as long as those cuts alsoprotected tax breaks for working families.

These remarks suggest that we are stuckwith our current work-based welfare regimefor the foreseeable future. This is a more pes-simistic conclusion than that of KennethNeubeck’s book, When Welfare Disappears,which argues that recent welfare rights ac-tivism points the way toward an alternative,universalistic, human rights-based welfareregime. I would welcome such a regime. Forthe reasons outlined here, however, I do notthink it is really in the offing. I suspect thatour welfare policy will continue to treat evena meager standard of living as a conditionalreward for work, rather than as an uncondi-tional human right. If this argument is right—if we are stuck with a system that earmarkspublic social provision for working fami-lies—then the most promising moves towarduniversalism may come from struggles to ex-pand what counts as work and earned in-come for the purposes of TANF and EITC, re-spectively; struggles to reduce barriers tolabor market participation; and struggles toexpand the definitions of family institutional-ized in American social policy.

But these remarks are speculative. Per-haps another systemic shift will take me bysurprise, and our welfare system will take aturn toward provision for everyone, regard-less of labor market participation or familystatus. I do not see many signs of it yet. Butthen, how many of us saw welfare reformcoming in the 1990s?


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