Self-sufficiency, ecology of work, and welfare reform

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act specifies self-sufficiency as the goal of welfare reform. This article identifies the philosophical and historical foundations for the concept of self-sufficiency, and it identifies ways that die concept needs to be both clarified and made more richly operational through a perspective of the ecology of work. This approach highlights limitations of the contemporary use of the concept of self-sufficiency and places the term more realistically in a social and cultural analytical framework that takes into account the perspective of people whose lives are affected by social policy.