Managing Welfare Reform in Five States: The Challenge of Devolution

by Liebschutz, Sarah F.

• ISBN13: 9780914341772
• ISBN10: 0914341774
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 presented challenges to all states to alter their welfare programs and management systems. This book analyzes the responses of five states to those challenges. It features similarities as well as differences in their implementation of welfare reform, within the context of their distinctive historical, political, cultural, economic and demographic experiences. Public support for moving welfare recipients to work forms the common overlay; reorganized state-level administrative structures, and diverse local management and service arrangements differentiate them. The chapters provide an in-depth account of welfare reform, its complex workings, and the important role played by political leaders at state and local levels in Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Public Opinion, Political Leadership, and Welfare Reform	1	(24)
Sarah F. Liebschutz
Florida Welfare Reform: Cash Assistance as the Least Desirable Resource for Poor Families	25	(18)
Robert E. Crew, Jr.
Belinda Creel Davis
To Privatization and Back: Welfare Reform Implementation in Mississippi	43	(14)
David A. Breaux
Christopher M. Duncan
C. Denise Keller
John C. Morris
Welfare Reform in New York: A Mixed Laboratory for Change	57	(20)
Sarah F. Liebschutz
Washington's WorkFirst Program: Key Policy Challenges	77	(26)
Janet Looney
Betty Jane Narver
Wisconsin Works	103	(20)
Thomas Kaplan
About the Authors	123	(4)
Index	127