Managing Welfare Reform in Five States
The Challenge of Devolution
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Analyzes the responses of five states—Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin—to the challenges of implementing welfare reform.
Description
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 presented challenges to all states to alter their welfare programs and management systems. This book features similarities as well as differences in their implementation of welfare reform, within the context of their distinctive historical, political, cultural, economic, and demographic experiences. Public support for moving welfare recipients to work forms the common overlay; reorganized state-level administrative structures and diverse local management and service arrangements differentiate them. The book chapters provide an in-depth account of welfare reform, its complex workings, and the important role played by political leaders at state and local levels in Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Sarah F. Liebschutz is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York, Brockport, where she was a member of the Political Science Faculty and Department Chair. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Rochester. Widely published in American intergovernmental relations, her most recent book is New York Politics and Government: Competition and Compassion.