IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/9711006.html

The New Welfare: How Can it Be Improved

Author

Listed:
  • Oren M. Levin-Waldman

    (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute)

Abstract

The Personal Responsibility Act, recently enacted in to law, effectively transforms the American welfare system from one of entitlement to a decentralized hodgepodge of programs intended to move people off of welfare. No longer is federal funding guaranteed, but it is subject to the annual congressional appropriations process. States receive their allocations in the form of block grants and are afforded greater flexibility to devise their own programs aimed at transitioning their caseloads into the labor market. As much as the states have the flexibility to devise their own programs, they are nonetheless required to operate within a set of narrow constraints that many may not be able to afford. For in addition to cumulative time limits, the denial of public assistance to legal immigrants, and the reductions in food stamps spending, the new law mandates that recipients will participate in work programs that states may devise any way they please. This paper examines the new welfare in the context of offering recommendations for improvement. As deficient as the new law may be, it nonetheless contains the potential to develop meaningful cooperative partnerships between the public and private sectors. The new law actually presents us with the opportunity to create new institutional structures aimed at generating greater employment. This would involve no less than breaking down bureaucratic distinctions between traditional welfare programs and employment programs. Rather the opportunity this legislation offers to the states to effectively create employment programs is an opportunity they should also seize to streamline programs already in place for assisting the unemployed with those for assisting welfare recipients. At the present time, bits and pieces are spread out among several different programs targeted towards different populations. As the new welfare requires the development of work-based programs the old distinctions between poverty and labor market, which have only served to stigmatize the poor, are no longer useful. The opportunity this legislation offers for improvement is perhaps an opportunity to move in the direction of a comprehensive employment policy if we as a nation are finally willing to make the commitment to pay for it.

Suggested Citation

  • Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1997. "The New Welfare: How Can it Be Improved," Macroeconomics 9711006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9711006
    Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 43; figures: included
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mac/papers/9711/9711006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Sullivan, Daniel G, 1988. "Measuring the Effect of Subsidized Training Programs on Movements in and out of Employment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 497-530, May.
    2. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 1992. "School Quality and Black-White Relative Earnings: A Direct Assessment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 151-200.
    3. repec:bla:revinw:v:39:y:1993:i:4:p:403-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Phelps, Edmund S, 1994. "Low-Wage Employment Subsidies versus the Welfare State," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 54-58, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Card & Dean R. Hyslop, 2005. "Estimating the Effects of a Time-Limited Earnings Subsidy for Welfare-Leavers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1723-1770, November.
    2. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, "undated". "A New Path from Welfare to Work, The New Welfare and the Potential for Workforce Development," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_31, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. David Card & Dean R. Hyslop, 2006. "The Dynamic Effects of an Earnings Subsidy for Long-Term Welfare Recipients: Evidence from the SSP Applicant Experiment," NBER Working Papers 12774, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Heather Antecol & Kelly Bedard, 2004. "The Racial Wage Gap: The Importance of Labor Force Attachment Differences across Black, Mexican, and White Men," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    5. repec:lan:wpaper:4471 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Card, David & Rothstein, Jesse, 2007. "Racial segregation and the black-white test score gap," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2158-2184, December.
    7. Verónica Amarante & Marco Manacorda & Edward Miguel & Andrea Vigorito, 2016. "Do Cash Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Matched Vital Statistics, Program, and Social Security Data," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 1-43, May.
    8. Dennis J. Snower & Alessio J. G. Brown & Christian Merkl, 2009. "Globalization and the Welfare State: A Review of Hans-Werner Sinn's Can Germany Be Saved?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 136-158, March.
    9. Lisa Cook, 2014. "Violence and economic activity: evidence from African American patents, 1870–1940," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 221-257, June.
    10. Jamie H. Douglas & Michael D. Steinberger, 2015. "The Sexual Orientation Wage Gap for Racial Minorities," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(1), pages 59-108, January.
    11. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Bruno Decreuse & Morgane Laouénan & Alain Trannoy, 2016. "Customer Discrimination and Employment Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the French Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 107-160.
    12. Falck, Oliver & Heblich, Stephan & Link, Susanne, 2011. "The Evils of Forced Migration: Do Integration Policies Alleviate Migrants' Economic Situations?," Stirling Economics Discussion Papers 2011-14, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    13. Hetschko, Clemens & Schöb, Ronnie & Wolf, Tobias, 2020. "Income support, employment transitions and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    14. Martha Bailey & Paul Mohnen & A.R. Shariq Mohammed, 2026. "The Evolution of U.S. Educational Mobility over the 20th Century and the Role of Public Education," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2026-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    15. Ichino, Andrea & Schwerdt, Guido & Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf & Zweimüller, Josef, 2017. "Too old to work, too young to retire?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 9(C), pages 14-29.
    16. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2002. "Simple and Bias-Corrected Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," NBER Technical Working Papers 0283, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Jean-Paul Fitoussi, 2000. "Allégements des charges sur les bas salaires," Revue de l'OFCE, Programme National Persée, vol. 74(1), pages 33-51.
    18. Coralie Perez, 2002. "Le nouvel avatar de la politique d'emploi américaine : le Workforce Investment Act," Post-Print halshs-00417939, HAL.
    19. Sophie van Huellen & Duo Qin, 2019. "Compulsory Schooling and Returns to Education: A Re-Examination," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-20, September.
    20. Marrero,Gustavo Alberto & Rodríguez,Juan Gabriel & Van Der Weide,Roy, 2021. "Does Race and Gender Inequality Impact Income Growth ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9865, The World Bank.
    21. Robert A. Margo, 1993. "Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940-1950: The Role of the Great Compression," NBER Historical Working Papers 0044, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9711006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask EconWPA to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.