From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965

by Jennifer Mittelstadt

Mittelstadt traces the debate over welfare and the rise of "workfare" among liberal activists, policy makers, and politicians through the story of the dramatic reform of Aid to Dependent Children from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Genres: American History

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2005

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent monograph tracing the development of welfare politics in the two decades following World War II. Mittlestadt places the center of the story in a three-stage shift in the emphasis in the debates. At the outset (going back to the origins of the Aid to Dependent Children program in the New Deal), welfare was conceived as a form of family support, a way to allow mothers to stay at home and take care of the family while the father, conceived as the sole breadwinner of a slightly mythical American family, worked. Gradually, the focus shifted to viewing welfare as a form of rehabilitation, providing services that would allow women to make the transition into the workforce without disrupting their families. Reflecting the influence of Wilbur Cohen, a major player in both scholarship and policy discussions, this led to renaming ADC AFDC, adding families to the description. That was a rhetorical move designed to garner conservative Democrat and Republican support for the changes proposed by Cohen and the JFK administration in the early 60s. However, Middlestadt demonstrates, that approach backfired because the emphasis on preparing women to assume positions in the workforce, combined with changes in AFDC that opened the program to some men, paved the way for conservative attacks (highly radicalized) and what has become the dominant approach to the relationship between work and welfare, which places work and punishment for "immorality" or "laziness" at the center of the political debate.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive and surprising look at welfare policy in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. Mittelstadt proves that far from being an era of universal consensus on welfare programs, policymakers and politicians battled strenuously over the meaning of assistance. Social Security doyens like Wilbur Cohen originally hoped to move all nominal "welfare" programs under the umbrella of social security, to take away the stamp of shame that putatively attached to receiving government help, yet his and others strategies, embodied in the 1961 and 1962 welfare reform acts, began pushing welfare recipients into rehabilitation work programs in order to strengthen that connection. Long before the famous 1996 reform, the connection between Aid to Dependent Children and the expectation of rehabilitation was growing stronger, and Mittlestadt shows why. It's a great look at how policy ideas have unforeseen political consequences.

[Jaime Rispoli-Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using the personal papers of key players such as Elizabeth Wickenden, as well as analyzing the actions
they performed, Middlestadt places herself in the historiographical discourse as providing a focus on
the "salient features" of an individualized interpretation of poverty which has gone "virtually unnoticed
by historians."9 In addition, while many historians have explored welfare history, they tend to cover the
periods of big change, such as the New Deal and the Great Society, while Mittelstadt covers a the work
of liberal policy makers, who not only lobby for policy change, but are involved in the academic end of
social work. She also delivers a fair critique of the changes that occurred to welfare as a result of liberal
reformers. In particular, she points out that Cohen and Wickenden’s ideals were never fully realized,
and that even as "work requirements were tightened during the past thirty years, work failed to remove
poor women on welfare from poverty.”

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good history of the development of the social safety net in America. The author explores the role of race in the development of the safety net, and she provides a thoroughgoing assessment of the role of race in its expansion and contraction to meet the needs of the poor.