The changes in the relative importance of humanitarianism, social control, and economy in the Philadelphia welfare system from 1800 to 1854 are examined by the author in regard to the management of public outdoor relief, indoor aid in the Alms-house, public and private assistance to needy children, and private charitable aid to impoverished adults.

The racially charged stereotype of "welfare queen"—an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers—is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in From Slavery to Poverty, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity. Mining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York City’s interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta shows that these institutions promoted a racialized definition of poverty and citizenship. But they also offered a framework within which working poor New Yorkers—recently freed slaves and disfranchised free blacks, Afro-Caribbean sojourners and Irish immigrants, sex workers and unemployed laborers, and mothers and children—could challenge stereotypes and offer alternative visions of community. Thus, SenGupta argues, long before the advent of the twentieth-century welfare state, the discourse of welfare in its nineteenth-century incarnation created a space to talk about community, race, and nation; about what it meant to be “American,” who belonged, and who did not. Her work provides historical context for understanding why today the notion of "welfare"—with all its derogatory “un-American” connotations—is associated not with middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, but rather with programs targeted at the poor, which are wrongly assumed to benefit primarily urban African Americans.

Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

"Examines the political and social influences behind the creation of the postrevolutionary Mexican welfare state in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s"--Provided by publisher.