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Full-Text Articles in Social Work
The Development Of An Unequal Social Safety Net: A Case Study Of The Employer-Based Health Insurance (Non) System, H. Luke Shaefer, Elizabeth D. Sammons
The Development Of An Unequal Social Safety Net: A Case Study Of The Employer-Based Health Insurance (Non) System, H. Luke Shaefer, Elizabeth D. Sammons
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
The U.S. social safety net exacerbates labor market inequalities rather than ameliorating them. This paper traces this theme within an important historical case study: the emergence of the employer-based health insurance system. Employers became the dominant and tax-preferred provider of health insurance in the United States without any federal legislative action. Understanding how this happened may inform current reform efforts. This case study highlights two important factors. The first is path dependency, discussed by Skocpol (1992) and Pierson (2000). They argue that the ambiguous divisions of power and a pluralistic governance framework favor incremental processes of social policy formation in …
Women's Lives And Poverty: Developing A Framework Of Real Reform For Welfare, Mary Gatta, Luisa S. Deprez
Women's Lives And Poverty: Developing A Framework Of Real Reform For Welfare, Mary Gatta, Luisa S. Deprez
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
The historic 1996 welfare reform is typically regarded as a successful public policy. Using the limited success metric of "reducing welfare rolls," welfare evaluations and analysis have obscured the lived experiences of recipients, particularly among women, who are disproportionally represented among welfare recipients. While it is true that welfare numbers are down, those women who have been forced off or left behind are not doing well. In this paper we seek to explore and critically evaluate the lived experiences of women, to challenge mainstream understandings of women's "success" post-welfare, and propose a theoretical and methodological framework, based on an intersectional …