The dilemmas of the liberal welfare state, 1945--1964: Gender, race, and Aid to Dependent Children.

This dissertation argues that Aid to Dependent Children---the federal welfare program for needy women and children---was dramatically reformed in the twenty years after World War II. The reform grew out of a postwar movement for rehabilitating welfare clients among a coalition of liberal organizations including foundations, universities, interest groups, and welfare and social work organizations. Rather than remaining an income support program for needy single mothers and their children, ADC was redefined as a social services program which rehabilitated welfare clients to independence, largely by encouraging clients to work. This dissertation also argues that welfare reform was intertwined with larger national political issues in postwar America. Welfare reformers saw rehabilitation as a way to inject efficiency and specialized knowledge into welfare, a program which policy expertise had long by-passed. More importantly, reformers' interest in women, welfare, and work reflected broader social issues of the period, including the rediscovery of poverty, changing family structure, and women's economic roles. Above all, welfare reformers, like other liberals, had faith in the ability of the postwar affluent society to solve the social problems associated with welfare. Finally, this dissertation argues that the fate of postwar welfare reform reflected the central dilemma facing the liberal welfare state after World War II---how to address gender and race in social policy. Because rehabilitative welfare reform addressed a target population disdained or overlooked by many Americans---poor African-American and white women---it comprised a unique approach to solving poverty among liberals. The goals of rehabilitating poor women initially generated a political consensus, reflected in successful federal legislation in 1956 and 1962. But this consensus soon deteriorated. Political opposition to welfare among conservatives exploded in 1960, and challenged the legitimacy of liberal welfare reform. More importantly, in the early 1960s, new liberal policy activists in civil rights, women's issues, and poverty trumped welfare reformers' exclusive claims to helping poor African-American and white women, pushing rehabilitation---and its target population of welfare clients---to the fringes of the liberal social agenda, and fracturing the liberal social agenda.PhDAmerican historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132845/2/9990945.pd