Becoming A Welfare State
by Baylie Mann
4 Factors
- America has taken a more regulated view of who is eligible to government assistance.
- America has been slower than other countries to embrace the welfare state.
- states play a large role in running welfare programs
- and nongovernmental organizations play a large role in welfare
Who Benefits?
Since the 1930s, America has been shaped by a slow but steady change in how we have separated the "deserving" from the "undeserving" poor. Americans base the welfare policy on the concept of "help for the deserving poor" rather than having fair shares.
How late the welfare policy arrived?
In 1908 in England, a national system of old-age benefits for nationwide health and unemployment, but it wasn't until 1935 that Congress passed that Social Security Act.
How federalism shaped national welfare policy?
Federalism gave power of welfare to the state governments.
4th Feature
Nongovernmental organizations can receive monetary grants. This allows the organizations to assist the poor.
Charitable choice prohibited religious organizations from using any public funds for proselytizing, religious instruction, or worship services, and also prohibited the government from requiring them to remove religious art from buildings where social service delivery programs funded by Washington might be administered.
Then & Now
Then
During the Great Depression, in 1929, state and local governments provided relief to the needy people such as widows, orphans, and the elderly. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Cabinet Committee on Economic Security to consider long-term policies. The cabinet committee emerged a plan that called for two programs:- insurance program (unemployed and elderly who would benefit when they became unemployed or retired)
- assistance program (blind, dependent children, and aged)
Now
Today, millions of Americans receive food, money, or medicine through programs funded largely by the federal government.