The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Welfare Reform: A Race to the Bottom?
Sanford F. Schram and Samuel H. Beer
This timely collection presents research contributing to the ongoing debate over welfare reform in the 1990s. Some chapters argue that the law will lead states to restrict benefits out of fear of becoming "welfare magnets." Other chapters assert that no such shift is taking place. Still others point to evidence that states are serving as "laboratories of deomcracy."
Most chapters were prepared for a conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and published as a special edition of the journal Publius. They have been supplemented by two new chapters, a new introduction by Sanford F. Schram, and an index.
What People are Saying
Chapter List
1. Introduction, Sanford F. Schram
2. Welfare Reform: Revolution or Retrenchment?, Samuel H. Beer
3. Interstate Competition and Welfare Policy, Mark Carl Rom, Paul E. Peterson, and Kenneth F. Scheve, Jr.
4. Comment on Interstate Competition and Welfare Policy, Frances Fox Piven
5. Welfare Reform and the Political Geography of Poverty, Margaret Weir
6. Revisiting Shapiro: Welfare Magnets and State Residency Requirements in the 1990s, Scott W. Allard.
7. Making Something Out of Nothing: Welfare Reform and a New Race to the Bottom, Sanford F. Schram and Joe Soss
8. Watching the Race: Where You Sit Affects What You See, Irene Lurie
9. Already Hit Bottom: General Assistance, Welfare Retrenchment, and Single Male Migration, Thomas Vartanian, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram, and Jim Baumohl
10. Early Findings About the Newest New Federalism for Welfare, Richard P. Nathan and Thomas L. Gais
11. Welfare Reform in Delaware: "A Better Chance" for Whom?, Karen A. Curtis
12. Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing, Jocelyn M. Johnston and Kara Lindaman
13. Predictions, Patterns, and Policymaking: A REgional Study of Devolution
14. The Impact of Welfare Reform on Medicaid, Saundra K. Schneider
15. Prospects for Low-Income Mothers' Economic Survival Under Welfare Reform, Barbara Gault, Heidi Hartmann, and Hsiao-Ye Yi.