States' rights, women's obligations: Contemporary welfare reform in historical perspective

This abstract asks how the demise of the federal "entitlement" to welfare will affect how low-income single mothers will be governed. Historical-institutional analysis is used to predict how the states, given their regained authority, are likely to define eligibility and procedural rules for welfare. These expectations are tested by analyzing the new state plans for the administration of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant program. Indices of eligibility rules and procedural rules are created and combined in a typology that depicts the new varieties of welfare governance planned by the states. The central argument is that as historical precedents would imply, the decentralization of authority for welfare is promoting the development of forms of welfare governance that vary dramatically from state to state, and which tend, predominantly, toward restrictive and coercive forms of rule. These developments mean that the obligations of poor women are being emphasized over their access to social provision.