ABSTRACT
The United States has seen its sovereignty on welfare rights challenged by the neoliberal rhetoric of ending welfare as we know it. The prevailing political argument was that social policies create work disincentives and this in turn traps many people in the state of dependency that exacerbates poverty. At the individual level, the argument was such that long-term welfare recipients have psychological barriers that put them in weak positions vis-à-vis the labor market. Unable to secure stable employment, they end up settling for welfare checks and government subsidies and continue to abuse the system by staying in the state of welfare dependency. Reflecting this problem definition, ending welfare dependency has surfaced as one of the four explicitly stated goals in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; P.L. 104-193). This welfare reform legislation created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) that replaced the 60-year-old federal assistance program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The reluctant welfare state has made a strong statement about removing the role of government in providing the safety net for its citizenry. Evidence from comparative welfare suggests that the United States is one of the least generous welfare states with the highest poverty rate (Smeeding, 2005; Brady, 2009a, 2009b). With weak left party politics in a highly globalized economy, the United States fits the conditions that contribute to its inability to protect its most vulnerable members. The focus on labor force attachment (LFA) and human capital development (HCD) as market-based solutions for people to escape poverty has continued to maintain dominant status in the push to end welfare dependency and promote economic self-sufficiency (Gueron and Hamilton, 2002; Hong and Pandey, 2008; Kim, 2010). Under the assumption that the psychological barriers that breed welfare dependency would be remedied by working, able-bodied welfare recipients have been recategorized as the dependent “undeserving” poor. These policy choices based on the change of heart have been too quick to penalize the target population by intensifying mandatory work participation. In this regard, the purpose of this chapter is to revisit the U.S. data from a period soon after the implementation of welfare reform during the welfare state retrenchment era and validate the extent to which welfare dependency explains various aspects of poverty-welfare status, employment, poverty, and working poverty.
