The following sections provide a discussion of the structure and intended audience of each book, and assess the value of each to its intended audience. The review concludes with a comparative analysis of the collection along with suggestions for further research.

From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in American Politics

Anne Marie Cammisa provides a lucid and thorough analysis of the historical antecedents of American welfare policy, its political and public policy implications, economic forces affecting its design, and an agenda for reform. Cammisa begins with a discussion of welfare policy as a “dilemma for American politics.” Noting the negative connotation that the term welfare typically evokes, Cammisa asks these questions: “How is it that policies intended to do good have engendered controversy and derision? Were the original policymakers hopelessly idealistic?

Did they engage in an elaborate attempt at social engineering doomed to failure from the start? Or has welfare become a scapegoat for all of society’s ills? Are politicians waging “class warfare” by attacking programs designed to help the disadvantaged?” (1998, 4) The author goes on to explore these questions and to debunk seven “myths about welfare” utilizing a variety of economic and demographic data.

Cammisa posits that “[t]he central dilemma in American welfare policy has always been how to help the truly needy while discouraging the able-bodied poor from relying on governmental assistance” (1998, 20). She reveals that the questions of reform and dependency can be traced to Elizabethan England, when public welfare began as a response to the dissolution of the British feudal system (1998, 26). Cammisa states that in Colonial America, welfare was often seen in moralistic terms with the ultimate goal being “rehabilitation of the poor” (1998, 30). It appears that what’s old is new again.

The author then turns to the New Deal era, which ushered in the beginnings of contemporary American welfare policy. She then discusses the “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” programs of the 1960s, the devolution of welfare policy to the states of the 1980s, and President Clinton’s reforms of the 1990s. “With the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, welfare has moved from a New Deal and Great Society program to one based on Republican ideology. Whereas the first half of this century saw the evolution of welfare to a national-state and national-local function, the past couple of decades have ushered in a devolution of federal authority” (1998, 58).

In shifting the responsibility for welfare reform to the states, President Clinton and Congress were at odds on the specifics of how the reform guidelines would be structured; Clinton twice vetoed welfare reform legislation passed by Speaker Gingrich and the Republican Congress (Cammisa 1998, 65). Cammisa provides a detailed analysis of the legislative struggle and relates this nicely to notions of the federal policy process and the political climate of the time.

Cammisa then discusses welfare reform in the context of public policy and concludes with an analysis of where these reforms may be headed in the future: “The policymaking process is a circular one, with changes in policy begetting more changes in policy” (1998, 125). However, the author sees no easy answers, positing that problems of the poor and welfare will persist long after the current reform fervor has subsided.

From Rhetoric to Reform should prove of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners. Of the four books reviewed here, Cammisa’s provides the most complete review of the issues and policies associated with welfare reform. The book should prove valuable as a reference for those involved in developing and administering social welfare policy, as well as serving as a central organizing text for undergraduate or graduate classes in social welfare policy or policy analysis.

Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet

Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aker trace the lives and trials of 10 American families struggling to raise children in households whose income falls below the federal poverty line. In doing so, they bring names, faces, and stories to the often impersonal debate surrounding welfare reform. “What is it like to be growing up poor in one of the richest countries on earth? What is it like for parents in the land of plenty to be engaged in a constant struggle to make ends meet? And how can America help poor children and their families? Those are among the questions we try to answer in this book by putting human faces on the cold statistics and describing strategies that could make a difference” (1999, 1).

The authors are granted extraordinary access to these families, which enables them to provide a candid, journalistic analysis of the varied factors contributing to their dire economic situations: health problems, disabilities, alcoholism, single-parent households, lack of educational achievement, and teenaged pregnancy, among others.

The authors provide numerous examples of the “Catch-22” effects of current welfare reform efforts where low-paying jobs do not replace the social safety net employed by state and federal assistance programs, particularly Medicaid, “(Megan) was paid $6.20 an hour, or almost $11,300 a year. With just one child to support she was no longer officially poor.... But her euphoria over increasing her income so dramatically was dashed quickly when she found out that she was making $100 a year too much for (her son) to qualify for Medicaid coverage. Her rent went up, too, since it was pegged to her income” (1999, 13).

While the first 10 chapters relate the circumstances of the selected families, Lives on the Line concludes with demographic data, providing a macro view of child poverty. The authors cite statistics that show that child poverty is no longer just an urban problem, but is becoming one in both rural and suburban America, as well. The long-term effects of current welfare reform efforts on the incidence of child poverty remains to be determined.

Lives on the Line delivers insight into the problems of the 10 families but incorporates little analysis into the text. While analysis, discussion, and demographics related to poverty are provided at the end of the text, these chapters seem to serve as an appendix rather than as an integral part of the book. Lives on the Line is an interesting read and would serve as a valuable supplemental text in a variety of social policy courses.

Work and Welfare

Work and Welfare provides insight into welfare reform through the lens of an economist. Written by Robert M. Solow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and edited by Amy Gutmann, the book contains the text of Solow’s lectures presented as part of Princeton University’s Tanner Lecture series. Reactions to Solow are provided by Gertrude Himmelfarb, Anthony Lewis, Glenn C. Loury, and John E. Roemer.

Written at a time closely following passage of the PRWORA, Solow presents a compatible economic model of welfare reform predicated on work and personal responsibility:

The model is guided by two explicit aims: one, to increase self-reliance among those citizens who are now on welfare, and two, to decrease the need for altruism among those citizens who now pay for welfare. Because self-reliance is such a positive value in American culture, the more citizens who see themselves and are seen by others as self-reliant the better. Because altruism is in such limited supply, the more it is conserved by public policies the better – provided it does not leave people out in the cold. The conservation of altruism makes all the more sense in light of the apparently increasing reluctance on the part of American taxpayers to support citizens on welfare. (1998, viii–ix)

Solow notes that the timing for passage of PRWORA was fortuitous in that it occurred in flourishing economic times and a period of low unemployment. While seeing the value in making the transition from public assistance rolls to the ranks of the employed, Solow proposes two salient questions: “What jobs will former welfare recipients find, and how will they find them?” (1998, 23).

However, Solow correctly states that the real test of the current reform efforts will occur when the lifetime benefits limit for welfare recipients is met. Furthermore, Solow doubts whether state and federal evaluative efforts will capture the true intent of the reform, “the administrative system tracks only recipients, not the would have-beens. They may be living with relatives who cannot afford them, or on the street, or under the bridges of Paris. The need for relevant data is not just the peculiar craving of academic social scientists. It is the life-blood of rational social policy and its evaluation” (1998, 43).

Solow notes that a market-based economic system “has a hard time dealing humanely with a wide variety of earning capabilities” (1998, 94). Solow’s lectures and their associated responses agree that while welfare and the problem of the poor can be viewed in purely economic terms, to do so would overlook the social, political, and legislative context in which the reform occurs.

Work and Welfare, with its almost purely economic analysis, provides an interesting contrast to the other books reviewed in this series. The text should prove useful as a supplemental text for graduate courses in public policy and analysis.

It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty

Rebecca M. Blank provides a multifaceted view of poverty, its determinants, and prospects for its amelioration. It Takes a Nation provides an extensive summary of literature and statistics relating to welfare while setting out an agenda for its reform: “State program officials, who now face the responsibility of redesigning their cash assistance programs, are the group at whom this book is most directly aimed” (Blank 1998, xxi). Blank probes the question of why the problem of poverty in America is seemingly intractable and under what circumstances effective programs can be designed to lessen its effects. The author sees poverty as both an individual and societal problem to be addressed by governmental and private organizations: “The government has a key ongoing role in public assistance to the poor, but government programs must be buttressed by the behavior of individuals and the involvement of civic institutions, from charities to businesses to community organizations” (1998, 9).

The book begins by dispelling common myths concerning poverty in the United States, pointing to the heterogeneous nature of poverty, that poverty is not confined to urban areas, and that many of those living in poverty are actually working poor. Blank then turns to the economy and its impact on poverty. The author provides evidence that economic growth in and of itself may not reduce poverty: “Even when overall employment was growing, the wages of less-skilled workers were falling steadily, meaning that increased work effort was offset by declining wages” (1998, 53).

The author traces government efforts to provide a “social safety net” for its citizens. Blank demonstrates how policies designed in the 1930s, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), did not envision the single-parent households of today. She explains that welfare policy for a number of antipoverty programs is evolving toward a greater reliance upon the individual to determine his or her own circumstance, and is devolving programmatically from the federal government to the states. Blank makes the case for a continuing federal role in the administration of social welfare policy: “While in many cases there has been too much hands-on micro-management by the federal government, the solution to this problem is not to eliminate all federal oversight, but to be more balanced about the division of responsibilities between federal and state governments” (1998, 217).

It Takes a Nation concludes with policy suggestions for welfare and antipoverty reform efforts: “I propose a reconfigured system of public assistance that moves us away from large-scale cash support and toward a more work-focused system. In particular, I propose a set of changes that would assure that working adults, even with low wages, will be able to support their children and will not be poor” (Blank 1998, 291). However, the author is overly modest in outlining her policy agenda, limiting this section to a scant few pages of the text.

It Takes a Nation is an essential reference for practitioners involved in administering social welfare programs. It should also prove to be a valuable main or supplemental text for a variety of undergraduate or graduate public policy courses.

Comparing the Four Books

Taken as a group, these four books provide an excellent introduction to the current welfare-reform policy debate. All of the books are appropriate for college courses in public policy. Two of the books, From Rhetoric to Reform and It Takes a Nation, are particularly appropriate for practitioners involved in administering social welfare programs. Additionally, these two books have the most general appeal to those readers interested in public policy and administration.

While all of the books are useful in striking a course in the uncharted waters of welfare reform, they all suffer from the nascence of the reform and the lack of evaluative data available from various state welfare reform efforts. As implementation progresses, much remains to be learned from one of the most ambitious social experiments of the past several decades. Many states have undertaken evaluative efforts of their welfare reform efforts. Compiling, analyzing, and comparing this state-based data should provide fertile material for future books concerning welfare policy. Furthermore, research-based efforts should focus on factors contributing to “successful” welfare reform, as well as to specific programmatic factors impinging upon its success.