Winner of the 2019 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award presented by the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association Families on welfare in the United States are the target of much public indignation from not only the general public but also political figures and the very workers whose job it is to help the poor. The question is, What explains this animus and, more specifically, the failure of the United States to prioritize a sufficient social wage for poor families outside of labor markets? The New Welfare Consensus offers a comprehensive look at welfare in the United States and how it has evolved in the last few decades. Darren Barany examines the origins of American antiwelfarism and traces how, over time, fundamentally conservative ideas became the dominant way of thinking about the welfare state, work, family, and personal responsibility, resulting in a paternalistic and stingy system of welfare programs.

Discusses the conservative ideological and political attack on welfare in the United States. Families on welfare in the United States are the target of much public indignation from not only the general public but also political figures and the very workers whose job it is to help the poor. The question is, What explains this animus and, more specifically, the failure of the United States to prioritize a sufficient social wage for poor families outside of labor markets? The New Welfare Consensus offers a comprehensive look at welfare in the United States and how it has evolved in the last few decades. Darren Barany examines the origins of American antiwelfarism and traces how, over time, fundamentally conservative ideas became the dominant way of thinking about the welfare state, work, family, and personal responsibility, resulting in a paternalistic and stingy system of welfare programs. “This book provides a skilled analysis of the conservative ideology about the welfare state. By analyzing the different strands of conservative thought, Barany shows how this ideology developed and converged into its contemporary form.” — Joel Blau, author of The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy, Fourth Edition

Analyses data from the 1985 Population Census to determine the different groups affected by poverty.

In the introduction, James S. Denton writes, 'The point of all the new programs of the 1960s, Americans were told, was to end poverty, not to underwrite it forever at indefinitely higher levels. Not only has the government failed to eliminate poverty, it has not even made progress towards that goal that can be detected by the most basic measures. The portion of the American population living in poverty remained essentially constant, from twelve to thirteen percent, between 1968 and 1985....This book is offered as a vehicle for hastening the emergence of (a) consensus on the need for comprehensive reform of the welfare system.' Contributors to this volume are: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James S. Denton, Michael Novak, Leslie Lenkowsky, Glenn C. Loury, Carl A. Anderson, Blanche Bernstein, June O'Neill, Robert B. Carleson, William J. Gribbin, Richard Vedder, John C. Weicher, William Orzechowski, Rep. Jim Courter, Rep. Sander Levin and Rep. Robert S. Walker. Will be of great interest to policy makers, social workers and students who need to understand the issue of poverty. Co-published with the National Forum Foundation.

The principles and value framework of the postwar welfare consensus were called into question with the general election of 1979. This book assesses developments in key areas of the welfare state, providing a comprehensive appraisal of the impact of Thatcherism. The contributors also examine the prospects for the 'new welfare' into the 1990s.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2018 im Fachbereich Politik - Region: USA, Note: 1.0, Universität zu Köln (Cologne Center for Comparative Politics), Veranstaltung: Political Economy of the USA, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The question arising for this research is the following: Can a paradigm shift explain changes in U.S. welfare policy under Reagan and did the altered policy have an impact on the economic well-being of its citizens? In order to answer these questions, this paper is divided into five sections. The first section presents Peter Hall’s approach of social learning, which serves as theoretical framework for this paper and indicates that a paradigm shift occurs through three different stages. Secondly, the method and data used in this paper will be discussed. The analysis, forming the fourth section, first establishes that indeed a paradigm shift happened by descriptively analyzing that the shift towards a new welfare consensus is detectable in all levels of social learning. Through the second part of the analysis, which evaluates the impact of the paradigm shift on the citizens’ economic well-being, it becomes obvious that no improvement happened during the Reagan presidency. Within the fifth sections the results will be summarized and discussed. The last section briefly considers the legacy Reagan bequeathed and points out the limitations of this paper. Since the 1970s, the welfare state faced mounting challenges. Moreover, the election of Ronald Reagan as new President of the U.S.A. marks a turning point in the history of the U.S. welfare. Reagan challenged the established welfare state consensus, arguing that the nation’s economic well-being would be promoted more effectively by retrenching and reorganizing the social welfare state. Under the Reagan Administration (1981-89) welfare policy was altered and brought into focus by new viewpoints on its purpose, encompassing a political call for more self-responsibility and less state regulation. A possible explanation for the changes could be the development of a new policy paradigm aiming to replace the existing one due to certain, mainly economical, reasons, also referred to as paradigm shift. Such a paradigm shift in the policy of a welfare state could alter the economic well-being of its citizen as it incorporates a change of self-perception of the state that it is no longer primary responsible for deliberately modifying the natural course of market forces through the provision of social services and financial assistance.