Public Assistance Welfare

Public Assistance Welfare

Introduction

Modern welfare has its roots in the Great Depression, which was a worldwide event, and began to be constructed in the 1930s through full-fledged government programs aimed at reducing the impact of poverty. Until the 1920s, various private institutions and foundations were responsible for providing assistance to the needy.

Thesis Statement

Unlike the “welfare states” of much of Western Europe, the United States has never provided subsistence benefits for most of its citizens. Additional programs, for example, Food Stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid, were added in the 1960s, but U.S. social protection laws do not provide universal coverage. Rather, each program provides benefits to a select category of people, with huge gaps in coverage. Even within targeted populations, numerous people who fall within broad program goals are excluded.

Discussion

Three groups, children, women, and the elderly, are impacted by public welfare differently. The consequence of public welfare on these individuals has to do with which model (noted above) a country employs when providing them with assistance (Williams, 2008).

According to (Piven, 2006), children who are raised in poverty are at risk for living in poverty themselves, for being less educated, and for having poorer health than are children who are not raised in poverty. Children's poverty status is directly linked to the poverty level of their mothers. Public welfare is intended to change family characteristics that lead to and keep children in poverty. The programs are based on the idea that being an employed mother is the best way to decrease the risks associated with poverty for children. For many countries, the problems that arise lie in the lack of education, and thus work skills, for women. Without education and skills, it is problematic to effectively employ women. Countries that pay for or subsidize childcare for working women or women who are attending training to develop skills are those countries that tend to be women-friendly and have lower poverty rates for working women with children (Neubeck, 2006).

For women, a variety of factors, for example, “the proportion of families headed by single mothers, the extent of women's labor force participation, and the degree of gender equality in the labor market,” according to Orloff, dictate the benefits and impact of public welfare has on women's poverty levels. Where there are more political opportunities for women (Germany and France, for example), social assistance is more developed for women and their children. As some studies note, restructuring public welfare has focused on urban poor in industrialized countries, thus adding another layer of inequality with urban-rural distinctions (Hansan, 2006). In the United States in the 1980s, political concern centered on how to reduce dependent welfare mothers and make them work to be productive members of society. This concern was addressed in 1996 with PRWORA, which was one portion of welfare reform. PRWORA ended entitlement and devolved the program more completely to the states, while detailing specific timelines for people to be welfare recipients (Handler, 2007).

In other words, the United States was attempting to move more in line ...