• Item #WASHINGTONS_LAW
  • ISBN: 094525783X
  • ISBN13: 978-0945257837
  • Copyright 2001
  • 518 pp.
  • Price: $9.95


Washington's New Poor Law

Welfare "reform" and the roads not taken, 1935 to the present

By Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and Sheila D. Collins

Blurbs

A clear and compelling account....challenges both conservative and liberal views on welfare dependency.

— Philip Harvey, Professor of Law, Rutgers University and author of Securing the Right to Employment

The authors argue that the personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, popularly known as welfare "reform", offers neither work opportunity nor real reform. In repealing the entitlement to welfare and failing to create an entitlement to work - at the same time as it imposes strict, time-limited work requirements - Washington has, in effect, written a new Poor Law.

What People are Saying...

Must reading for anyone trying to understand recent welfare policy and develop strategies for reform.

— Henry Freedman, Executive Director, Welfare Law Center

Sheila Collins and Trudy Goldberg's thoughtful arguments, based on a comprehensive vision of social rights American citizens, provide a powerful rebuttal to popular views promoting the 1996 welfare reform bill.

— William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

It is an indispensable resource for anti-povery workers, researchers, policy analysts, scholars and students - and for the general public and the public officials working to create a decent society.....provocative and very timely.

— Herbert J. Gans, author of The War Against the Poor and Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

A significant, creative contribution to the literature of Social Policy which provides not only a critical analysis of the vicissitudes of the dehumanizing AFDC program from its inception in 1935 to its demise in 1996, but also suggests realistic alternatives which could and should have been implemented.

— David G. Gil, Professor of Social Policy, Director of the Center for Social Change, Brandeis University