Welfare reform

Murray (1984) considers the question of welfare in the larger context of American social policy over a thirty year period. He has more in mind than welfare policy, though welfare is at the heart of what American social policy during this era wanted to achieve and also at the heart of how the system has failed to achieve those goals. Murray settles on the term "social policy" to describe what he is talking about and defines this as a loosely defined conglomeration of government programs, laws, regulations, and court decisions touching on almost every dimension of life:

. . .
pproach to solving the problems of the poor. He begins with his statement that social policy may be construed as transfers from the haves to the have-nots and considers what justifies making these transfers at all. He finds that the principle is legitimate even when the methods are not. There are a variety of kinds of transfers, though we may only think of economic transfers when discussing the subject. One of the anomalies of the present system as noted by Murray is that since the mid-1960s social policy has demanded an extraordinary range of transfers from the most capable poor to the least capable poor, from the most law-abiding to the least law-abiding, and from the most responsible to the least responsible. Murray finds that such transfers from one set of the poor to another set of the poor are uncomfortably like robbery: When we require money transfers form the obviously rich to the obviously poor, we at least have some room for error. Mistaken policies may offend our sense of right and wrong, but no great harm has been done to the donor. The same is not true of the noneconomic transfers from poor to poor (Murray, 1984, 204). The disparity in income between those on welfare and those not on welfare differs from stat
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Department Education's, Investment Program, Reville Winkler, Resources Subcommittee, AFDC California, Children AFDC, Supreme Court, California GAIN, Congress Welfare, Anderson Brady, social policy, ellwood 1988, net income, welfare reform, welfare recipients, murray 1984, american social policy, welfare ellwood, winkler 1994, afdc unit, court decisions, iowa family investment, unrelated cohabitors households, programs social policy, family investment program,
Approximate Word count = 2181
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Welfare reform