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Demography (2015) 52:729749 DOI 10.1007/s13524-015-0395-0
Robert A. Moffitt1
Published online: 6 June 2015# Population Association of America 2015
Abstract Contrary to the popular view that the U.S. welfare system has been in a contractionary phase after the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s, welfare spending resumed steady growth after a pause in the 1970s. However, although aggregate spending is higher than ever, there have been redistributions away from non-elderly and nondisabled families to families with older adults and to families with recipients of disability programs; from non-elderly, non-disabled single-parent families to married-parent families; and from the poorest families to those with higher incomes. These redistributions likely reflect longstanding, and perhaps increasing, conceptualizations by U.S. society of which poor are deserving and which are not.
Keywords Welfare . Poverty. Single mothers
Introduction
The nature of the U.S. welfare system has been a subject of long-standing research interest among those who study low-income and disadvantaged families and children. The countrys system of welfare programs has a strong relationship to the family. Historically, for example, the primary recipient group has been single-mother familiesa group that has been the focus of much research given their high rates of poverty and the implications of that poverty for children. The role of absent fathers and their relationship to children, as well as the role of the child support system, have been another focus of research relating the welfare system to the family. The U.S. welfare system also provides support that is quite different depending on whether individuals are single or in a union, whether children are present in the family, whether a male and
* Robert A. Moffitt [email protected]
1 Department of Economics, The Johns Hopkins University, 440 Mergenthaler Hall, 3400 N. Charles
Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
The Deserving Poor, the Family, and the U.S. Welfare System
730 R.A. Moffitt
female partner are married or cohabiting, and whether the adults are biologically related to the children. In all these classic areas of research on the family, the welfare system plays a role.
This article will address two broad questions about the evolution of the U.S. welfare system and how that evolution has resulted in changing patterns of support for families of different types. The first question is simply...