Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Howard is the Pamela C. Harriman Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of "The Hidden Welfare State" (Princeton).

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"Forget what you thought you knew. Christopher Howard takes us on an eye-opening, mind-expanding, entirely unexpected tour of the American welfare state. He describes a big, popular, sprawling, often Republican system that--thanks to cherished American institutions like federalism--does not work very well. Smart, wise, synthetic, funny, and iconoclastic--The Welfare State Nobody Knows is required reading for everybody who wants to know about welfare, about politics, or about the United States."--James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation and The Democratic Wish

"Christopher Howard is one of the most original and provocative students of the American welfare state--and this book splendidly sums up his insights. We learn that the American welfare state is larger and more dynamic than many have believed--yet, to this day, it fails to ameliorate inequality or poverty. Scholars and citizens alike will find that this book raises questions and provides answers nowhere else to be found."--Theda Skocpol, Harvard University

"Highly informative, original, and concise."--Martha Derthick, University of Virginia

"In The Welfare State Nobody Knows, Christopher Howard compellingly reveals an American welfare state that is at once larger than previously acknowledged and yet incapable of solving the fundamental social problems confronting the nation. The book, which combines narrative accounts and quantitative analysis, is up to date but historically grounded. It is also, at times, appropriately contentious. The book is a must read for anyone committed to understanding the unique character of social policy and politics in the U.S."--Mark A. Peterson, UCLA School of Public Affairs

"In this myth-busting book, Christopher Howard challenges cherished notions about the American welfare state--that it consists of two tiers with generous social insurance benefits for the middle class and stingy means-test benefits for the poor, that it emerged with two 'big bangs' in the 1930s and 1960s, that it is smaller than its European counterparts, and that the elderly usurp an unfair share of national resources. Beautifully written and clearly argued, The Welfare State Nobody Knows should be required reading for all students interested in American political development."--Jill Quadagno, Florida State University

"Howard provides ample food for thought-offering new perspectives on old questions, challenging prevailing stories about American social welfare policy, and sowing the seeds for more creative research and thought. The book's catchy, readable style and its attention to how to think about issues--questions to ask, data to consider, methods to use, and ways to assess our comfort or discomfort with results--engage the reader in applying the critical thinking skills that are essential to evaluating and participating in public policy."--Judith Feder, Georgetown University

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The Welfare State Nobody Knows

Princeton University Press

Chapter One

This book takes issue with the thinking behind the question and many of the stock answers to it. In the process, it offers a much different portrait of U.S. social policy. Although the American welfare state did not turn out just like its relatives in Europe and Canada, it did become large and far-reaching. The general public has called for more government involvement, and elected representatives from both parties have responded. U.S. officials have created a variety of social programs throughout the twentieth century. In recent decades, they have managed to expand some programs for the poor and near poor. There has actually been a remarkable amount of activity in the American welfare state-but you need to know where to look. And if you do know where, then all sorts of stories about failure and obstruction in social policy become suspect.

On the other hand, all this activity has not had much impact on the core problems of poverty and inequality. If traditional accounts of the American welfare state boil down to "little effort, little progress," my account highlights the paradox of lots of effort and little progress. No matter how successful advocates have been in creating and expanding social programs, certain features of American politics have limited the benefits of many official changes in policy. Some of their accomplishments have even made it harder to reduce poverty and inequality. The American welfare state contains greater possibilities and tighter constraints than commonly believed. Recognizing these possibilities and constraints is essential for anyone who wants to understand the American welfare state or change it.

This book challenges a number of myths, misunderstandings, and half-truths about the American welfare state. Some pieces of conventional wisdom are based on questionable assumptions, or just plain wrong. In other places, analysts have the facts right but the explanations or implications wrong. These errors are not random; they spring from at least four sources. The first is that many analysts use European welfare states as their reference point when investigating the American welfare state. Historically, European welfare states (and Canada) have relied heavily on social insurance programs. Because the United States does not meet this standard, it seems to lag behind. While this approach may lead to a number of interesting and important comparisons, it misses alternative ways of addressing social needs. The American welfare state happens to rely less on social insurance and more on tax expenditures, loan guarantees, and social regulation than welfare states elsewhere. Once we include these other tools of government, our understanding of the size, shape, and historical development of the American welfare state changes substantially. Social insurance is one way to build a welfare state but not the only way. The significance of this error is introduced in chapter 1.

A second source of error has been overreliance on a few social programs, particularly Social Security and welfare, to support more general claims. Social Security is supposed to represent everything that is right with U.S. social policy and welfare everything that is wrong. From these two programs we are supposed to make all sorts of inferences about social policy, many of which turn out to be faulty because many social programs do not work like Social Security or welfare. It's like visiting California and Louisiana and assuming that you now understand the entire United States. This error is first discussed in chapter 2.

Third, while many economists and policy analysts examine the recent performance of social programs, scholars interested in the politics of social policy have concentrated primarily on developments between the late nineteenth century and the early 1970s. Scholars who have ventured into the latter decades of the twentieth century usually focus on a single program, legislative milestone, or group of beneficiaries. Few scholars have tried to generalize broadly about recent developments in the American welfare state. Chapter 3 begins to make the case for looking more closely at recent decades. What was true about social policy in the middle of the twentieth century was not necessarily true at the end.

Am I arguing that the conventional wisdom has always been wrong? No. In a number of instances, the old truths worked well for a time. Unified Democratic control of government was essential to passage of new social programs in the 1930s and 1960s. Many of the means-tested programs emerging from the New Deal and the Great Society were politically vulnerable. Public support for the welfare state was lower in the United States than in Canada and Europe in the 1970s. But none of these "old truths" does a very good job of capturing the world we live in now. The American welfare state has changed in recent decades, and our understanding must change with it.

All three of these errors contribute to faulty inferences based on limited evidence. The final source of error is methodological. Unlike other parts of the social sciences, the study of social policies has seldom devolved into battles over the One Right Way to acquire useful knowledge. Scholars have certainly disagreed about the relative influence of social movements, public opinion, political elites, and other factors. But seldom have they faulted each other for choosing a fundamentally flawed research design or relying on qualitative versus quantitative evidence. Some scholars are quite good at admitting the limitations of their own research methods and encouraging readers to consult work by scholars from alternative research traditions. The prevailing attitude is "live and let live."

One problem with this attitude is that it can lead to peaceful segregation rather than genuine integration. True research communities, with scholars working on similar problems using different but complementary research strategies, are rare. We have many qualitative case studies analyzing developments in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and many large-N quantitative studies aimed at the last third of the century. We have fairly distinct groups of people working at the cross-national, national, and state levels. What emerges from the literature is a long list of important insights, affecting any number of social policies and historical eras, that never quite add up to a coherent whole. So much has been written by scholars marching happily, and often productively, in very different directions.

This book is unusual in pulling different research traditions together in a single study of U.S. social policy. It draws on three of the most important traditions-the policy analytic, the behavioral, and the historical-each of which has something valuable to offer. Scholars working in these traditions hail from political science, history, economics, sociology, and law. In some chapters, one tradition is featured; in other chapters, two or three traditions work together. If these traditions remain separate, then myths and misunderstandings about the American welfare state will likely persist. At a minimum, integrating these approaches will enable us to ask better questions about the politics of U.S. social policy.

THE PLAN OF THE BOOK

This book grew out of my experiences teaching a course called The American Welfare State to college students. I originally designed the course to convey general patterns of social policy making. Over the years the course evolved into a list of the many exceptions to these patterns, and recent editions of the course could fairly be titled (How Not to Think About) The American Welfare State. This book is my way of trying to state those objections more clearly and connect them in interesting ways. Each chapter typically opens with some piece of conventional wisdom, followed by evidence that it is wrong or seriously incomplete. Wherever possible, I have tried to offer some new generalizations about social policy to replace the old ones. Essentially, this book is a recurring process of demolition and reconstruction.

My attacks on the conventional wisdom cut across ideological lines. I challenge claims that liberals make about the size and shape of the American welfare state, and about the vulnerability of means-tested social programs. By the same token, the chapters concerning the impact of public opinion, of federalism, and of race on social policy will probably not sit well with conservatives. Such evenhandedness could signify a relentless pursuit of truth, or it might simply reflect a perverse desire to pick a fight with as many people as possible (personally, I prefer relentless).

Because I want this book to be used in classrooms, I presume little in the way of prior knowledge. Social science jargon is kept to a minimum, and most of the quantitative analysis is displayed in simple tables. These steps should have the added benefit of making the book accessible to a more general audience interested in social policy. In doing so, I run some risk of losing my audience of scholars and specialists, but I hope that a wide-ranging attack on the conventional wisdom might hold their interest. Some of the chapters end with ideas for future research, and I hope that some readers will be intrigued enough to investigate. The book is intended to spur debate over what is and is not possible in U.S. social policy, and I do not expect to have the last word.

Part 1 surveys the size, shape, and historical development of the American welfare state. The underlying premise of this "Basic Tour" is that we need to know what the American welfare state looks like and how it began before we can start analyzing its politics. Rather than cite a long list of numbers and dates, I organize the most important facts around a few key debates. Chapter 1, "She's So Unusual," challenges the notion that the American welfare state is considerably smaller than its European counterparts. For one thing, different measures of size yield very different results. Moreover, the closer you look at the full range of policy tools, the bigger the American welfare state appears. The key question to ask is not why the United States does less than other welfare states but why the United States does things differently.

Chapter 2, "Tracks of My Tiers," analyzes the overall shape of the American welfare state. We have been told repeatedly that the American welfare state has two distinct tiers. The upper tier of social insurance programs is supposed to enjoy numerous advantages, politically and programmatically, over the lower tier of public assistance programs. One has only to contrast Social Security with welfare to appreciate the gulf separating these two tiers. And yet, the more we learn about other social programs, the more suspect the two-tiered model becomes. Important programs such as Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation do not fit very well in their designated tiers. Tax expenditures, social regulation, and other tools of social policy further compound the problems of the two-tiered model. It may make more sense to think about how different tools of social policy are used to help people at different stages of their lives.

Chapter 3, "Twice in a Lifetime," lays out a basic chronology of the American welfare state with emphasis on the origins of social programs. Everybody knows, for example, that the American welfare state emerged dramatically during two "big bangs" of activity in the mid-1930s and mid-1960s. Social Security, welfare, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and a number of other programs originated during these two brief moments in time. Political scientists, historians, and sociologists have long debated what made these moments possible-extraordinary presidents, social movements, policy experts, struggles between business and labor, or something else. That debate is less compelling if a number of social programs were created at other points in U.S. history, which they were. They may not have been the kinds of social programs found in Europe, but they addressed many of the same problems and groups. This revised history leads to a greater sense of political possibilities, particularly with respect to political parties.

The emphasis in Part 1 is on breadth: comparing the size of welfare states in many countries, comparing important features of many U.S. social programs, and finding patterns in the enactment of many social programs across the entire twentieth century. Part 2 of the book offers more analytic depth. Chapters 4-7 focus on interesting anomalies and causal relationships that can lead us to a richer understanding of the American welfare state. This part is titled "New Horizons" because one common theme is how scholars have overestimated the constraints on social policy. Chapter 4, "Ogres, Onions, and Layers," picks up where chapter 3 left off by comparing three recent cases of social programs enacted under divided government-the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Child Tax Credit. The most surprising finding is that Republican officials were pivotal actors in each case. The party usually known for bashing the welfare state has been instrumental in creating new social programs.

Problems with the two-tiered model of the American welfare state are analyzed more fully in chapter 5. After all that we have read and learned about the vulnerability of means-tested programs, how in the world did the EITC grow faster than any other major U.S. social program between 1980 and 2000? Why were so many politicians, liberals and conservatives, singing its praises? Did its success have anything in common with the equally remarkable expansion of Medicaid during the same period? These questions are not asked very often. Many scholars believe in the old saying "Programs for the poor are poor programs," meaning that they are doomed to fail politically. Inclusive programs like Social Security are supposed to offer the only blueprint for sustainable social policy. By comparing the recent history of Medicaid and the EITC with that of other means-tested programs, I will demonstrate that some programs for the poor are much less vulnerable than others, and I will offer reasons why this is so.

In chapter 6, I return to the cross-national comparisons introduced earlier in the book. National values have often been cited as the main reason why the American welfare state is relatively small, but if analysts have been wrong about its size then they may be wrong about the impact of values as well. This chapter opens by comparing public support for the welfare state in a handful of affluent democracies. While support in the United States may lag behind the support in other countries, it is strong in a number of areas. The rest of the chapter shows how durable and broad this support has been. Contrary to reports of a "right turn" in American politics, public support for the American welfare state has not waned in recent decades. Even people who call themselves Republican want to spend more on some social policies. Public opinion data help explain the size and distinctive shape of the American welfare state, as well as some of the curious behaviors described in chapters 4 and 5.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Welfare State Nobody Knowsby Christopher Howard Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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