BiblioVault - Books about Social Services & Welfare

Making Social Welfare Policy in America

Three Case Studies since 1950

Edward D. Berkowitz

University of Chicago Press, 2020

American social welfare policy has produced a health system with skyrocketing costs, a disability insurance program that consigns many otherwise productive people to lives of inactivity, and a welfare program that attracts wide criticism. Making Social Welfare Policy in America explains how this happened by examining the historical development of three key programs—Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Edward D. Berkowitz traces the developments that led to each program’s creation. Policy makers often find it difficult to dislodge a program’s administrative structure, even as political, economic, and cultural circumstances change. Faced with this situation, they therefore solve contemporary problems with outdated programs and must improvise politically acceptable solutions. The results vary according to the political popularity of the program and the changes in the conventional wisdom. Some programs, such as Social Security Disability Insurance, remain in place over time. Policy makers have added new parts to Medicare to reflect modern developments. Congress has abolished Aid to Families of Dependent Children and replaced with a new program intended to encourage work among adult welfare recipients raising young children.

Written in an accessible style and using a minimum of academic jargon, this book illuminates how three of our most important social welfare programs have come into existence and how they have fared over time.

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Marginalized in the Middle

Alan Wolfe

University of Chicago Press, 1996

Addressing volatile social issues such as gender, pornography, race, welfare, immigration, and schooling, Alan Wolfe examines the ills of American society in the 1990s. He shows that it is possible to be critical and fair at the same time, and concludes that social criticism does not lie within the boundaries of either left-wing or right-wing ideas, but rather is connected to a broad understanding of liberalism. This immensely readable book illustrates the power of social criticism to enlarge discussion of issues at the heart of democracy today.

"In applying a realist approach to controversies over immigration, pornography, race relations, and the apparent communications gap between the genders, Wolfe seeks to demonstrate the advantages of combining the insights of criticism and the tools of social science."—Library Journal

"A plea for a return to liberal thinking, an insistence on the value of 'social criticism beyond politics.' "—Washington Post Book World

"[Wolfe] surveys contemporary public discourse on racial and sexual relations, welfare policy, immigration, pornography, education and cultural politics . . . he manages to bring some fresh thinking to most of these stale debates."—T. J. Jackson Lears, New York Times Book Review

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Medicare

Intentions, Effects, and Politics, Volume 26

Mark A. Peterson, ed.

Duke University Press

At a time when Medicare stands at the forefront of national politics, Medicare: Intentions, Effects, and Politics moves past the political rhetoric of the moment to provide a groundwork for informed debate. This special issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law offers a historically-based exploration and understanding of Medicare as well as needed perspectives for intelligent reform.
A complete understanding of the particular and peculiar structure of Medicare can be gained only by considering the ideas, politics, and institutions of the 1960s that shaped it. With this historical perspective, the articles in this collection can move beyond partisan arguments and politically motivated reform proposals. Instead, they outline educated guidelines for improving Medicare and debunk commonly held but false assumptions about the program. In "How Not to Think about Medicare" the field’s most noted scholar, Theodore Marmor, exposes four such misconceptions, including the program’s seeming inability to control costs and ward off what some call a fiscal tsunami—the aging of the baby boomers. Other contributions address frequently overlooked functions of Medicare. While the program is known for its universal health coverage for the elderly and the disabled, for instance, Medicare also serves a crucial role in overseeing hospital performance and furthering health education. This special issue concludes with a discussion of Marmor’s recently revised classic book, The Politics of Medicare, by five leading specialists who interpret the present Medicare program in light of its original construct and current political influences.

Contributors. Michael Gusmano, Jacob Hacker, Nancy M. Kane, Stephen A. Magnus, Theodore Marmor, Jonathan Oberlander, Eric M. Patashnik, Mark A. Peterson, Mark J. Schlesinger, Carolyn Tuohy, Bruce Vladeck, Julian Zelizer

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Mother-Work

Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930

Molly Ladd-Taylor

University of Illinois Press, 1994

Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of child-rearing, using the relationship between them to cast new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States.

Ladd-Taylor argues that mother-work, "women's unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving," motivated women's public activism and "maternalist" ideology. Mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering in many ways, including the reduction of the infant mortality rate.

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