Social Welfare
Policymaking
 Income

 Defining the Rich and the Poor
 Defining Government Involvement
 The Evolution of American Social Welfare Programs
 The Future of Social Welfare Policy
 Understanding Social Welfare Policy
 Democracy and Social Welfare
Social Welfare Policy

 The U.S. has one of the largest income gaps in the world
because income distribution is extremely unequal
among different economic classes
 The degree of government involvement in issues of
poverty has resulted in major political debate
 Definition: Policies that provide benefits to individuals,
either through entitlements or means-testing
Income: Defining the
Rich and the Poor

 The rich have not only more income but also greater
wealth in the form of stocks and other assets
 A small number of Americans- 1% of the total
population –possess more than one-third of all wealth in
the U.S.
 Americans overall are well-off, given their low cost of
living and low taxes
Debate

 The debate hinges on how people view the poor
 As receiving too much government money
 As “deserving” if a family has lost its breadwinner or has
a legitimate reason, such as a disability, for not being able
to work
 As “undeserving” if they abuse the system or have created
conditions of poverty themselves
Entitlement Programs

 Government benefits that certain qualified
individuals are entitled to by law, regardless of need
 Most government funds are given through
entitlement programs to people who are not poor
Means-tested programs

 Government programs available only to individuals
below a poverty line
 Eligibility for means-tested programs depends on
how narrowly poverty is defined
Poverty

 Defined by the government as a family income that falls
below the poverty line
 Counts underestimate poverty because millions of
people hover around the line and continually fall just
below or rise just above it

 Income distribution
 The “shares” of the national income earned by various groups
 Income
 The amount of funds collected between any two points in time
 Wealth
 The value of assets owned
 Poverty line
 A method used to count the number of poor people
 It considers what a family must spend for an “austere” standard
of living
 Feminization of Poverty
 The increasing concentration of poverty among women,
especially unmarried women and their children
Defining Government
Involvement through Taxation
 Progressive

 the wealthy are taxed at a higher rate
 Current income tax
 Proportional
 Everyone is taxed at the same rate
 Flat tax
 Regressive
 People of lower incomes are taxed at a higher rate
 Sales tax or consumption tax
Defining Government
Involvement through
Expenditures

 Transfer payments are given by the government
directly to citizens
 Food stamps
 Student loans
 Social security and Medicare benefits
NOTE: The elderly receive the MOST in transfer
payments
Evolution of American
Social Welfare Programs

 The Great Depression proved that poverty can be
beyond anyone’s control and encouraged the
government to become more involved in welfare
 Social Security began under the New Deal; the poor
became a part of the Democratic New Deal Coalition
 LBJ – initiated many Great Society programs to fight the
War on Poverty
Evolution of American
Social Welfare Programs

 President Reagan cut the growth of many of these Great
Society programs during the 1980s
 The system underwent a major overhaul during the
Clinton administration
 Families receive small payments with a maximum of two
years to find employment
 People have a lifetime max of five years on welfare
 States operate their own welfare programs

 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)
 Official name of the “welfare reform” law of 1996
 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
 Name for public assistance to needy families
 Medicare
 Assistance with healthcare costs for the elderly
 Medicaid
 Assistance with healthcare costs for the needy
Welfare
Eligibility and Benefits

 In 1996, welfare reform legislation (The Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act) ended federal entitlement to cash assistance
(under the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)
program). The 1996 law created a new welfare program, Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which:
 limits the provision of cash assistance to families with a dependent child or
pregnant woman
 imposes a 60 month lifetime limit on the receipt of benefits
 requires that a family's benefit be reduced if parents do not cooperate with
child support officials
 denies assistance to individuals convicted of a drug felony
 denies assistance (for a period of 10 years) to any person convicted of fraud
in the receipt of benefits in two or more states
 denies assistance to teen parents not living in an adult-supervised setting
 denies assistance to non-citizens who arrived in the United States after 1996.
Criticisms of Welfare

 Discourages the poor from solving their own
problems
 Make it profitable to be poor
 Discourages poor people from saving money
The future of Social
Welfare Policy

 Social programs have become a major component of
government
 How they will continue to fare depends on future
presidents, members of Congress, interest groups,
and voters [you]
Future of Social
Security

 Highly likely that the system will go bankrupt
during the twenty-first century
 More people will be of retirement age
 The cost of living is rising, so monthly payments will
increase
 Either taxes will have to be raised or benefits will have
to be cut
Future of MeansTested Programs

 Their future is even more tenuous than Social Security
 Results of antipoverty programs show that poverty has
not decreased
 Some argue that federal benefits encourage people to
remain in poverty
 Others contend that other problems such as recessions
have distorted the results
Democracy and
Social Welfare

 Influences voters’ decisions
 Is a factor in choosing party identification
 Interest groups for senior citizens are much better
organized than groups for the poor (AARP)
 The size of the bureaucracy has grown in order to
support such sweeping welfare programs