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^2. In 1994, 37 percent of AFDC recipients were white nonhispanics. The proportion of nonwhites was much higher in certain regions or cities: for example, 75 percent in Alabama and 97 percent in Washington, D.C. 1996 Green Book, p. 474, table 8–28; pp. 483–84, table 8–33.

^3. Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda, “A Geneology of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19:2 (1994): 310Google Scholar. Another, and very useful and thought-provoking, approach to the character and consequences of the language of the welfare state in America is Rodgers, Daniel T., “Why Is Poverty a Public Problem? Rhetorics of Obligation in American Social Policy,” in Katz, Michael B. and Sachsse, Christoph, eds., The Mixed Economy of Social Welfare: Public/Private Relations in England, Germany, and the United States, the 1870's to the 1930's (Baden-Baden, Germany, 1996), 25–50.Google Scholar

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^5. Report to the President of the Committee on Economic Security (Washington, D.C., 1935), 45.Google Scholar

^6. A note on usage: when we are referring to Aid to Dependent Children only, we use the acronym ADC; when the reference is only to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, we use AFDC. When we refer to a characteristic of both programs that spans both its incarnations, we use A(F)DC.

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^9. There is a third track—taxation—which has received much less discussion as a component of the public welfare state. See Howard, Christopher, The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar. We use “public” welfare state to differentiate these programs from those in the private welfare state of employee benefits, which is discussed below.

^10. “Prologue,” in Chambers, Clarke A. and Wattenberg, Esther, eds., To Promote the General Welfare (Minneapolis, 1988), 2.Google Scholar

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^24. Ibid., 322.

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^29. On gender and the origins of the welfare state, see Gordon, Linda, “Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890–1935,” American Historical Review 97 (February 1992): 19–54CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. On gender and unemployment insurance, see Young-Hee Yoon, Roberta Spalter-Roth, and Marc Baldwin, “Unemployment Insurance: Barriers to Access for Women and Part-Time Workers,” National Commission for Employment Policy, Research Report No. 95–06, July 1995, 20–29.

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