Women, Children, and Poverty

Does this unbounded success represent an accurate picture of welfare reform nationally, and in New York state? The focus of this paper is on the condition of women and children after federal welfare reform, and whether this dismantling of protections has improved, or worsened, their lives.

According to Ruth Sidel (1996), politicians in the United States have scapegoated femaleheaded families and made them the enemy of the state. She indicated that the end of the Cold War had left a political vacuum in terms of enemies, and that conservative politicians had filled that void with the welfare mother, the unmarried mother, and the singleparent family headed by a female, among others. These were the new enemies of the state who were leading the decline of America.

This view of Sidel's seems at least partially borne out by the debate on welfare ref

. . .
l experiment in radical welfare reform? One question that has been a focus of attention is: has it reduced welfare roles and the cost of welfare? Another question that has been less a focus is: How has it affected the lives of women and children? There is no doubt that welfare roles have been falling, although part of that decline began before the legislation was in place and some of the decline is attributable to the economic boomlet that has been underway. Reischl (1999) reported on research dealing with some of the different pathways that were taken to achieve lower caseloads. He noted that by 1998, welfare benefits reached a 30year low, which many politicians automatically attributed to the changes in federal law. However, research by Maury Gittleman (1998) uncovered several reasons for this change. Gittleman (1998) used national survey data of a random sample of families collected from 1983 through 1997. He used this data to track the flow of these individuals into and off of welfare. Essentially, he concluded that it was difficult to make a direct connection between any one piece of legislation or federal reforms in general, because there were so many changes occurring at the same time. Nonetheless, he did discove
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4399
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)

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