The Impact of Welfare Programs on Poverty Rates: Evidence from the American States

There is spirited debate between those who maintain that public assistance to the poor decreases poverty by raising their incomes (an income enhancement effect) and those who contend that welfare increases poverty by discouraging the poor from working (a work disincentive effect). Extant studies have been inconclusive because they have focused on the effect of welfare benefits on the poverty rate, but have not employed designs that allow researchers to sort out distinct income enhancement and work disincentive effects. We develop a model of poverty rates in the American states that permits estimation of these distinct effects ñ based on state-level time-series data observed annually for the years 1960-90 - and we find that welfare had both effects during our period of analysis. We also calculate the net impact on the poverty rate of an increase in welfare benefits (taking into account both income enhancement and work disincentives), and we conclude that it has varied across states and time. In general, however, the ability of marginal increases in welfare spending to reduce the poverty rate by enhancing incomes has declined since the 1970s

The Organization of Discipline: From Performance Management to Perversity and Punishment

Over the past few decades, poverty governance in the United States has been transformed by the convergence of two powerful reform movements. The first, often referred to as “paternalist,” has shifted poverty governance from an emphasis on rights and opportunities to a stance that is more directive and supervisory in promoting preferred behaviors among the poor. The second, often described as “neoliberal,” has shifted governance away from federal government control toward a system that emphasizes policy devolution, privatization, and performance competition. During this period, public officials have proved remarkably willing to hand policy control over to lower jurisdictions and private providers. They have been equally eager to use public policies in ways that overtly promote values, enforce obligations, and curtail deviance among the poor. In the era of neoliberal paternalism, poverty governance has become more dispersed in its organization, more muscular in its normative enforcement, and more firmly rooted in the logics of performance-based accountability and market competition

Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of racial classification and policy choice, we test four hypotheses regarding client race and sanctioning. Our study does not support a simple story in which racial minorities are always more likely to be targeted for discipline. Rather, we find the impact of race to be contingent on local politics, administrative decentralization, and other client characteristics

Devolution, Discretion, and Local Variation in TANF Sanctioning

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Devolution, Discretion, and the Effect of Local Political Values on TANF Sanctioning

One of welfare reform\u27s most significant consequences is the devolution of policy-making authority from the federal government and states to local governments and frontline workers. What is perhaps less often appreciated is that devolution of authority to state governments has been accompanied by a significant decentralization of policy-making authority within states. As a result, prior research has not given sufficient attention to local political context as a factor shaping program implementation. This article examines the effect of local political values on the use of sanctions to penalize welfare recipients. Analyzing administrative data from the Florida Department of Children and Families for over 60,000 welfare clients, we find that there is a statistically significant amount of local variation in sanctioning rates across the state of Florida, even after controlling welfare clients\u27 characteristics. Local sanctioning patterns are systematically related to selected characteristics of local communities, including their ideological orientations

Devolution, Discretion, and the Effect of Local Political Values on TANF Sanctioning

One of welfare reform\u27s most significant consequences is the devolution of policy-making authority from the federal government and states to local governments and frontline workers. What is perhaps less often appreciated is that devolution of authority to state governments has been accompanied by a significant decentralization of policy-making authority within states. As a result, prior research has not given sufficient attention to local political context as a factor shaping program implementation. This article examines the effect of local political values on the use of sanctions to penalize welfare recipients. Analyzing administrative data from the Florida Department of Children and Families for over 60,000 welfare clients, we find that there is a statistically significant amount of local variation in sanctioning rates across the state of Florida, even after controlling welfare clients\u27 characteristics. Local sanctioning patterns are systematically related to selected characteristics of local communities, including their ideological orientations

The Woman's Bible: Once Failed, Now Scripture

Published in two parts in 1895 and 1898, The Woman’ s Bible presented Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s views on the biblical foundations of patriarchy and sexism. The text was reviled by prominent clergymen upon its publication, and women involved in the suffrage movement distanced themselves from it. Nevertheless, the Bible was revived in the 1970s by second-wave feminists. It is natural to view this text as paratextual to the Bible; this paper, however, reads it as its own scriptural text, just as the second-wave feminists did. The text served as scripture for feminism, particularly for those feminists who were also concerned with Christianity and the Bible. The Bible targeted an American Christian audience of both men and women, assuming a good knowledge of the Bible. Its invited uptake might have been for readers to reevaluate biblical “truths” regarding women. Regardless, it certainly was taken up this way: clergy at the time of publication strongly took issue with it, while feminists reacted differently decades later. The Bible has many paratexts, especially in light of the feminist literature that draws on it. This paper examines the dynamic history of The Woman’ s Bible through the lens of its scripturalization. Its maintenance was almost non-existent for decades, so it provides a unique insight into the impact of reviving a scriptural text after a period of little use