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Social Welfare Law

Race

2012

Selected Works

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Race, Rat Bites And Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate, Lucy A. Williams Jan 2012

Race, Rat Bites And Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate, Lucy A. Williams

Lucy A. Williams

This article exposes and critiques the media images of poor women and children that drive legislative debate in social assistance, or welfare public policy issues in the United States. It explores the impact of media images on law-making by focusing on three statutory time periods: 1935, when the Aid to Dependent Children program was initially enacted as part of the Social Security Act; 1967, when the first mandatory work requirements were added to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and the mid-1990s, when states began implementing widely divergent categorical eligibility requirements that restrict benefits in an attempt to …