American Social Welfare Policy

This best-selling text provides a balanced and comprehensive overview of social welfare policy in the United States while examining cutting-edge issues, including: information on the 2008 presidential election, the economy, the housing bust, the passage of Proposition 8 in California, nd much more.

This book examines the conceptual, historical and practical implications that various social policies in the United States have had on ethnic minorities.

For courses in Social Welfare Policy. Note: This is the bound book only and does not include access to the Enhanced Pearson eText. To order the Enhanced Pearson eText packaged with a bound book, use ISBN 0134303199. Comprehensive, current coverage of the history, issues, and forces that shape American social welfare policy. American Social Welfare Policy, Eighth Edition cultivates an understanding of both national and international social welfare policy. Using a policy analysis framework, the authors give students the background needed to grasp the social, political, and economic forces that shape social welfare policy, analyze the major programs that make up the U.S. welfare state, and discuss basic social welfare concepts. Updated throughout, the Eighth Edition examines the dramatic domestic and international events occurring since the previous edition that have impacted social welfare policy worldwide. Invigorate learning with the Enhanced Pearson eText The Enhanced Pearson eText provides a rich, interactive learning environment designed to improve student mastery of content with embedded videos. The Enhanced Pearson eText is also available without a print version of the textbook. Instructors, visit pearsonhighered.com/etextbooks/ted to register for your digital examination copy. Students, register for or purchase your eText at pearsonhighered.com/etextbooks/ted.

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.

William M. Epstein charges that most current social welfare programs are not held to credible standards in their design or their results. Rather than spending less on such research and programs, however, Epstein suggests we should spend much more, and do the job right. The American public and policymakers need to rely on social science research for objective, credible information when trying to solve problems of employment, affordable housing, effective health care, and family integrity. But, Epstein contends, politicians treat welfare issues as ideological battlegrounds; they demand immediate results from questionable data and implement policies long before social researchers can complete their analyses. Social scientists often play into the political agenda, supporting poorly conceived programs and doing little to test and revise them. Analyzing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the recent welfare reform act, Food Stamps, Medicaid, job training, social services, and other programs, Epstein systematically challenges the conservative’s vain hope that neglect is therapeutic for the poor, as well as the liberal’s conceit that a little bit of assistance is sufficient.

This work proposes a new approach to welfare: a social policy that goes beyond simple income maintenance to foster individual initiative and self-sufficiency. It argues for an asset-based policy that would create a system of saving incentives through individual development accounts (IDAs) for specific purposes, such as college education, homeownership, self-employment and retirement security. In this way, low-income Americans could gain the same opportunities that middle- and upper-income citizens have to plan ahead, set aside savings and invest in a more secure future.

Social welfare activities stand at the heart of the modern democratic state as they absorb ever-increasing budget allocations and stimulate debate over the proper role of government. This study analyzes the development of social welfare policy in modern America, beginning with a critical assessment of the dominant "progressiveâ and "social control