Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics - Paperback

by Gwendolyn Mink (Editor), Rickie Solinger (Editor), Frances Fox Piven (Foreword by)

Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.
In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients' experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.
They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.
Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square--welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.

Author Biography

Gwendolyn Mink (Editor)
Gwendolyn Mink was Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Smith College. She is the author and editor of many books, most recently coauthor of Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective.

Rickie Solinger (Editor)
Rickie Solinger is a historian, the editor of a book series on reproductive justice, and a curator who organizes exhibitions associated with the themes of her books. Her books include Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade, The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law, and Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States.

Frances Fox Piven (Foreword by)
Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School, City University of New York. She is coeditor of Work, Welfare and Politics. Her other award-winning books include Regulating the Poor, Why Americans Don't Vote, and Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (all with Richard Cloward).