POVERTY AND SOCIAL WELFARE POLICIES

Poverty and Social Welfare Policies

Poverty and Social Welfare Policies

A review of the literature related to poverty and social welfare policies in the USA shows that the problem of poverty is a highly charged issue today, as it has been for the past 400 years. Even after centuries of public and private attention to this problem, the real causes of poverty are still not fully understood. The four quotations on this page illustrate various perspectives about the most appropriate welfare policy for the 21st century. In the 1930s, and again in the 1960s, social welfare programs were expanded to provide for the poor in America. However, these efforts were judged to be a failure by policy analysts in the 1980s. Some argued that the programs actually did harm, developing a welfare dependency among the poor. In the 1980s and 1990s, another round of welfare reform occurred, as decision makers tried to develop a better social welfare system. Beginning in 1981, individual states (such as Wisconsin) tried to develop innovative ways to combine work with welfare. By 1987, 26 states had implemented some degree of workfare programs, though many of the “statewide” programs were tested or implemented in only a few counties. Low rates of workfare implementation greatly limited the effectiveness of these programs in reducing welfare caseloads in the 1980s. It seemed that workfare programs did not work as well as anticipated in these states. In fact, workfare programs cost more than simply providing welfare assistance. So Congress, in 1996, resorted to a system of lump sum grants to the states, granting them flexibility in terms of how these funds would be spent, as long as the states assured some minimum benefits to welfare recipients. (Tony, 2011)

In short, there is much disagreement about the causes of poverty and, consequently, much disagreement about the most appropriate welfare policy. Welfare policy refers to a variety of social services, including income assistance, child and family services, vocational rehabilitation, day care, some aspects of primary health care, and in some states, care for prisoners in penal institutions. In this chapter, we discuss poverty in America, paying particular attention to alternative conceptions of the poverty problem and to the attendant solutions (welfare policies) derived from these alternative conceptions of the problem. This paper discusses poverty, with social welfare policies from 1960 to 1990 that relates to poverty and how they have been beneficial or a hindrance.

Poverty In America

Defining Poverty

The first step in constructing appropriate policy solutions is to try to understand the scope and nature of the public policy problem. Thus, the extent of poverty in the United States needs to be measured, which can be done in several ways. These alternative measures of poverty include both quantitative and qualitative indices. For example, the official definition of poverty developed by the U.S. Social Security Administration is a quantitative index. An individual or family is defined as “poor” if their income is below a certain level. This level is adjusted for the size of ...