Ending Dependency : Lessons From Welfare Reform in the USA

There are few changes in social policy that have been so radical and so contentious as those made to the US welfare system in the 1990s. The reforms abolished the idea of a 'right' to welfare. Claimants were to be steered firmly into the workforce, with strict time limits for those claiming benefits--no more than two years at a stretch, and no more than five years in a lifetime.

The reforms were denounced by some of President Clinton's former supporters, who warned of an increase in poverty, and of the impossibility of finding jobs for so many new entrants to the labour market. However, the welfare rolls have fallen by over half, while poverty rates have also fallen. The reforms have been a success.

As Alan Deacon says in his introduction, this is a great time to be a conservative on welfare policy in the USA. In spite of this, the contributors to this volume resist the temptation to triumphalism and examine the extent to which the fall in welfare rolls have been attributably to other factors, such as the strength of the US economy, and the introduction of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Alan Deacon asks what lessons the US experience offers the UK. There are similarities between the language of New Labour and that of US welfare reformers, but the Blair government has shown itself unwilling to enforce work requirements, particularly on lone mothers. Until there is a consensus on the absolute requirement to work, the success of US welfare reform will elude the UK.

Douglas J. Besharov is the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar in Social Welfare Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs and director of its Welfare Reform Academy. He is the author or editor of several books, including Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned, 1990; Enhancing Early Childhood Programs: Burdens and Opportunities, 1996; and America’s Disconnected Youth, 1999.

Alan Deacon is Professor of Social Policy and a member of the ESRC Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare at the University of Leeds. He has written widely on the debate about welfare reform in Britain and the United States, most recently in Political Quarterly, 1998; Journal of Social Policy, 1999 and Policy and Politics, 2000. His latest book, Perspectives on Welfare, will be published by Open University Press in 2002.

Peter Germanis is Assistant Director of the University of Maryland’s Welfare Reform Academy. He is author or co-author of numerous publications on welfare reform, including Evaluating Welfare Reform: A Guide for Scholars and Practitioners, 1997.

Jay Hein is director of the Welfare Policy Center and research fellow at Hudson Institute. Prior to this he served as a director of Hudson’s Madison, Wisconsin field office and manager of a Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development welfare reform policy team. In both of these roles Hein was instrumental in designing and implementing Wisconsin’s ground-breaking welfare replacement programme. He is presently co-authoring a book on Wisconsin’s effort to replace welfare with a work-based system. He has written for and has been quoted in numerous newspapers and periodicals.

Donald K. Jonas is a research fellow with the Welfare Policy Center (WPC) and director of the WPC’s Southeast Field Office. Prior to joining the WPC, Jonas was the Herman Kahn Fellow at the Hudson Institute during the 1997-98 term. He is an adjunct professor of political science at Butler University, where he teaches state and local government. He graduated from the University of North Carolina (BA, 1989), Appalachian State University (MA 1992), and the University of Kentucky (PhD 1998). Dr Jonas is co-author of Hudson’s Health Care 2020, a book about the future of America’s healthcare system, and he is contributing author to Hudson’s Workforce 2020, a book describing the challenges and opportunities for American corporations and workers in the early twenty-first century.

Amy L. Sherman is Senior Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Urban Ministries Advisor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, VA. Her most recent book is Restorers of Hope: Reaching the Poor in Your Community with Church-Based Ministries that Work, Crossway Books, 1997.