Contemporary Social Welfare Policy: Toward an Inclusive Future

Undergraduate / Graduate

Since the welfare reforms of the 1990's, most public programs are now contingent upon work, with few exceptions. At the same time, many in the US continue to struggle with meeting basic needs during robust economic times and especially during economic downturns when work is difficult to find. What does this mean for individuals, children, families? Have post-reform changes in safety provisions helped or hindered in ensuring an inclusive safety net? Are we better off after the largest overhauls of the social safety in the US? These are questions that this course will interrogate, with an emphasis on how marginalized groups along racial, ethnic, SES, and immigration status lines have fared. To these ends, this course will explore US government policies of means-tested and social insurance provisions at the federal, state, and local levels and whether they attenuate socioeconomic hardship among marginalized groups. The course will provide an overview of the post-reform circumstances of lower-income residents, the ways in which scholars, policymakers, and others have studied the effects of social reform policies, and the theoretical lenses different disciplines have taken regarding this phenomena. The course will draw from theoretical frameworks from across the disciplines including neoclassical economics (economics), administrative burden (political science), racial capitalism (sociology), culture of poverty (political science and social work).