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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- List of Acronyms -- Preface -- 1 The Challenges of Welfare in America Today -- Frank and Joan -- Social Welfare in the 1990s: Same Old Problems? -- How Welfare Plays Out in the American System -- Efforts to Define Welfare -- Poverty and Welfare -- The Working Poor—the Welfare Concern for the 1990s -- The Historical Foundation of Welfare -- Welfare Economics -- Welfare Professionalization -- Welfare Implications -- Notes -- 2 Family and Religious Values in Welfare Ethics -- A Word About Values -- Ethics -- Ideologies -- Values Important for American Welfare Policy -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 3 Transforming Ideology into Welfare -- Welfare's Value Paradigm -- Organizing Welfare -- The Model for Charity Organization Societies -- Mary Richmond and the Development of Modern Social Work -- The Social Reformers -- Professional Welfare: The Social Security Act -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4 Welfare's Political Framework -- The Shift Begins -- Political Foundations -- The Welfare Shifts of the 1960s -- Welfare Directions Today -- The Federal Administration of Welfare -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5 The Evolution of America's Present-Day Welfare Policies and Programs -- Philosophical Conflicts -- Intergovernmental Relations -- Insurance Programs -- Assistance Programs -- Other Welfare Programs -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 6 American Ideologies: Liberalism, Its Limitations and Potential -- Historic Liberalism -- Liberalism in the American Experience -- The Liberal Environment for Welfare Policy -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 7 American Ideologies: Capitalism, Economics Without Ethics -- The Ideology and Ethics of Capitalism -- The Economics of Capitalism: Microeconomics -- The Economics of Capitalism: Macroeconomics -- Conclusion -- Notes

This book attributes American poverty to consequences 19th Century social welfare policies within an economy stretching to meet its 21st Century economic potential, arguing that American poverty persists as economic and political structures have moved into the world of fiscal planning but social welfare remains in its Depression-era structure

America's Great Recession has provoked a twenty-first century awareness of her costly social welfare commitments, failure to protect Americans in times of broad-based economic disaster, and longstanding inability to reduce poverty. Arguing that historic social rehabilitation efforts to confront longstanding American poverty have failed, and by concentrating on the cash support obligations America has undertaken, this book refocuses the poverty debate on an overburdened social welfare system deprived of a sufficient political and economic foundation to support its commitments. American capitalism has refashioned itself to meet today's global economic challenges, often at the expense of economically disadvantaged citizens, while the social welfare system remains chained to principles that fail to narrate American poverty. Economic need is no longer a story of personal failure; poverty has become a macroeconomic construct, and work no longer provides the poor with the path to economic independence. Only by refashioning America's social insurances, her commitments to welfare assistance, and her inadequate efforts to support low wage employment will America join the ranks of companion advanced nations in bringing poverty under control.

The Social Security Act in perspective -- Title II, the program structure of old age, survivors and disability insurance -- Title II, the policy structure of old age, survivors, and disability insurance -- Title III, unemployment Insurance -- Title XVI, supplemental security income -- Title IV, who's taking care of the children -- Title XVIII, Medicare -- Titles XIX and XXI, Medicaid and the state child health insurance program -- Title XX, social service -- The Social Security Act for America's twenty-first century

AbstractAlthough not characterized as a program designed to address the problems of poverty, Social Security, the linchpin of America's social welfare enterprise, impacts poverty more significantly than most of the usually identified anti‐poverty programs. For examples, more children receive Social Security benefits than those on welfare, and Social Security payments are modified to provide low income earners with proportionately higher benefits than their higher earning counterparts. Affirming the validity of Social Security the recent National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform represents a changed environment for Social Security policy development, and it has proposed several Social Security initiatives that would expand its reach more deeply into the jungle of poverty. Recognizing the limitations of existing social welfare anti‐poverty programs, collapsing the cash assistance functions of these programs into Social Security would contribute significantly to reducing poverty in the United States. Such an endeavor, however, would not only require a realignment of America's social welfare programs, but would increase the fiscal burdens born by Social Security. Such proposals could reduce the poverty rate by 3 percent or more, but they also call further attention to the failure of the payroll tax to sustain not only current Social Security commitments, let alone satisfy any further obligations Social Security might assume by virtue of its expanded role. This paper provides the gateway for further study of the poverty reducing potential of Social Security.