Lawrence M. Mead

The Logic of Workfare: the Underclass and Work Policy

Much of todays entrenched poverty reflects the fact that poor adults seldom work consistently. The problem cannot be blamed predominantly on lack of jobs or other barriers to employment, as the chance to work seems widely available. More likely, the poor do not see work in menial jobs as fair, possible, or obligatory, though they want to work in principle. Government has evolved policies explicitly to raise work levels among the poor. Workfare programs, linked to welfare, show the most promise but still reach only a minority of employable recipients. Welfare reform should, above all, raise participation in these programs, as the share of clients involved largely governs their impact. Welfare should also cover more nonworking men to bring them under workfare. While work enforcement may seem punitive, the poor must become workers before they can stake larger claims to equality.

Citizenship and Social Policy: T. H. Marshall and Poverty

T. H. Marshall, a British sociologist, gave a series of lectures in 1949 under the title “Citizenship and Social Class.” To many American intellectuals, his analysis still offers a persuasive account of the origins of the welfare state in the West. But Marshall spoke in the early postwar era, when the case for expanded social benefits seemed unassailable. Todays politics are more conservative. In every Western country the welfare state is under review. Yet Marshalls conception can still help define the issues in social policy and the way forward.

Welfare Policy: The Administrative Frontier

The process of national welfare reform has been overtaken by local reform as states implement experimental programs under federal waivers. Most of these initiatives attempt to enforce work or otherwise control the lives of the dependent in return for support. Research, which traditionally stressed the social and economic aspects of welfare or poverty, must be reoriented to address the administrative issues raised by the emerging paternalism. A combination of field interviewing and analyses of reporting data can track implementation and connect program operations to outcomes. Such research assesses program performance less definitively than experimental trials do but is more useful to operators and more relevant to current program goals. The frontiers of welfare research, like welfare policy, are institutional.

The potential for work enforcement: A study of WIN

Given the impediments around them, can welfare recipients be required to work? Most analysts have answered no. They say the recipients are usually kept from employment by socioeconomic barriers, such as insufficient jobs, and the disincentives to work inherent in welfare. Studies of recent AFDC work programs make them look promising but do not directly address the potential for work enforcement. This article, a cross-sectional study of state WIN programs in 1979, suggests that work requirements could raise work levels substantially despite the impediments. But requirements probably do not improve the quality of jobs recipients are able to get. Therefore, enforcement serves the goal of integration, but to achieve greater economic equality will require additional reforms.

Welfare Caseload Change: An Alternative Approach

In the last decade, caseloads in AFDC/TANF have shifted dramatically up, then down. Of existing studies based on time series or state panel data, some tend to underplay the role of welfare reform. All say little about what policies drove the decline or about the role of governmental quality. An approach using cross-sectional models explains interstate differences in caseload change rather than the national trend but allows more discussion about the role of policy and government. Results suggest that grant levels, work and child support requirements, and sanctions are important explainers of change, along with some demographic terms and unemployment. These policies in turn are tied to states’ political opinion, political culture, and institutional capacity. Moralistic states seem the most capable of transforming welfare in the manner the public wants.

Welfare Reform in Wisconsin The Local Role

The article suggests a new model for the implementation of social programs based on welfare reform in Wisconsin. Existing models tend to be top-down or bottom-up, but in Wisconsin the leading counties and the state government worked interactively to transform welfare. Existing accounts of the Wisconsin reform stress state-level leadership, but key features such as high participation in work programs and an emphasis on “work first” rather than training were developed first in Kenosha and several other counties and then adopted statewide. The article also dramatizes the critical role of strong program management and organization.

The Great Passivity

According to the APSA report, “American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality,” in the United States economic and political inequality are feeding on each another. Since the 1970s, earnings, income, and wealth have become more unequal, while politics is becoming more elitist. Rising inequality is corrupting our democracy, especially through the rising role that money plays in politics. At the same time a more exclusive government exacerbates, or at least tolerates, growing inequality. Lawrence M. Mead testifies regularly to Congress on poverty, welfare, and social policy and has written many books and articles on the politics of poverty and welfare reform, most recently Lifting up the Poor (with Mary Jo Bane) and Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin .

Poverty: How Little We Know

Researchers have failed to explain satisfactorily long-term poverty among working-aged individuals. Theories that suggest that the problem is due to barriers, such as welfare disincentives or a lack of jobs, look less persuasive today than they did a generation ago. Explanations might be improved if models included the effects of authority and poverty culture on behavior, but to operationalize such influences is difficult. More fundamental difficulties include separating cause from effect and discriminating among closely related determinants. The causes of serious poverty will probably remain elusive.

The interaction problem in policy analysis

A problem little noted in the literature on policy analysis is that analysis can interact with problems to make them different and more difficult to solve than they would be without analysis. Four varieties of interaction can be distinguished. All are rooted in the methods and assumptions of economics, the discipline that now dominates federal analysis, and particularly in its limited capacity to set policy goals. To prevent interaction, analysts would have to be able to set goals with greater independence so that aims were not swayed by the analytic process. They would need either their own theory of ends or closer political guidance.

Teaching Public Policy: Linking Policy and Politics

Policy makers constantly struggle to reconcile policy and politics—to square what they want to do on the merits with what consent requires. Academic research and teaching on public policy, however, have typically separated policy argument from political analysis. Some authors recommend solutions to public problems, whereas others examine the politics of actual policies. I propose a combined conception of policy research and teaching that joins policy analysis and political analysis. This approach links elements of economics and political science to approximate the actual process of statecraft. I also describe how I built courses on public policy for undergraduates and graduate students using this conception and the implications for pedagogy. Unfortunately, academic trends are against such breadth. Research on policy is becoming more specialized and methodological, remote from actual government. Involvement in policy making, however, may draw some scholars toward research and teaching that combines policy and political perspectives.