The Results of a Vision of the Early Workfare: The Shrinking of Welfare by the Strength of Work Requirements for AFDC Recipients

KOBAYASHI Hayato
Abstract:
This paper shows how and why work requirements for Aid to Families with Dependent Children: AFDC recipients developed through analyzing why had work requirements imposed on them. In the 1960s, U.S. society had a lack of systems for the problems of unemployment and poverty related to racial and sexual discrimination. To meet needs, the federal government created new public assistance programs, particularly AFDC, which included work support programs. However, AFDC recipients could not get jobs and the number of recipients increased. This brought financial difficulty to local governments. As a result, a conservative shift occurred which emphasized the breakdown of the work ethic and the family. In 1969, President Nixon proposed the idea of "workfare," which intended to set work requirements and work incentives in AFDC programs for employable recipients and for the working poor. Although his proposal failed to be approved, work requirements for employable but non-working recipients and work incentives for working recipients and the working poor were actually strengthened beyond Nixon's plan in 1972. Even single mother recipients of AFDC were regarded as employable. Workfare had the effect of shrinking the liberal expansion of public assistance.


Keywords: Workfare, Single mothers, Work requirement, AFDC, FAP