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US Welfare Reform: Rewriting the Social Contract

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

NEIL GILBERT
NEIL GILBERT*
Affiliation:
Chernin Professor of Social Welfare, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley email: berkeley1@msn.com
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Abstract

This paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 383 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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