front cover of Actively Seeking Work?
Actively Seeking Work?
The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain
Desmond King
University of Chicago Press, 1995
Why have both Great Britain and the United States been unable to create effective training and work programs for the unemployed? Desmond King contends that the answer lies in the liberal political origins of these programs. Integrating extensive, previously untapped archival and documentary materials with an analysis of the sources of political support for work-welfare programs, King shows that policymakers in both Great Britain and the United States have tried to achieve conflicting goals through these programs.

The goal of work-welfare policy in both countries has been to provide financial aid, training, and placement services for the unemployed. In order to muster support for these programs, however, work-welfare programs had to incorporate liberal requirements that they not interfere with private market forces, and that they prevent the "undeserving" from obtaining benefits. For King, the attempt to integrate these incompatible functions is the defining feature of British and American policies as well as the cause of their failure.
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America's Struggle against Poverty, 1900-1980
James T. Patterson
Harvard University Press, 1981

logo for Harvard University Press
America's Struggle against Poverty, 1900-1985
James T. Patterson
Harvard University Press, 1986

front cover of America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century
America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century
Enlarged Edition
James T. Patterson
Harvard University Press, 2000
This new edition of Patterson's widely used book carries the story of battles over poverty and social welfare through what the author calls the "amazing 1990s," those years of extraordinary performance of the economy. He explores a range of issues arising from the economic phenomenon--increasing inequality and demands for use of an improved poverty definition. He focuses the story on the impact of the highly controversial welfare reform of 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President Clinton, despite the laments of anguished liberals.
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