The workfare state

the long version

The Workfare State is a fascinating and essential new account of the rise of work as a condition for social assistance in the Unite States. Work became a requirement for social assistance, reinforcing the low-wage economy of the South and in turn the political bases of the lawmakers responsible for the change. That the same forces that shaped welfare legislation in the 1930s continued to do so decades later, and for similar economic and racial reasons, is disturbing. That welfare recipients were thrust into work just as deindustrialization and globalization undermined the low-wage sector is heartbreaking. A new must-read in the development of American social policy. Andrea Louise Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.