Making Work Pay: America after Welfare

by Robert Kuttner (Editor), Robert B. Reich (Introduction)

Overview

In the five years since Congress acted to "end welfare as we know it," millions of people have been forced out of government assistance programs into low-wage, dead-end jobs with few, if any, benefits. They still await the second half of President Bill Clinton's welfare reform, which was supposed to "make work pay." Joining the important debate over the future of welfare and work, Making Work Pay brings together leading policy analysts and journalists to examine the broad fallout of welfare reform: among them, Michael Massing reports on welfare-to-work programs that actually work; Naomi Barko reveals how the gender gap in wages hits low-income workers hardest; Harold Meyerson describes the growing movement to organize low-wage workers; and Jared Bernstein and Mark Greenberg outline an agenda for the future of welfare reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565846951
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	05/01/2002
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.58(w) x 8.24(h) x 0.62(d)

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Working Principles: From Ending Welfare to Rewarding Work	vii
	A Clean Sweep: The SEIU's Organizing Drive for Janitors Shows How Unionization Can Raise Wages	1
	Ending Poverty as We Know It	21
	Holding Out	38
	Vermont: The Greening of Welfare	40
	The Welfare Shell Game	46
	Tough Sanctions, Tough Luck	48
	How Welfare Offices Undermine Welfare Reform: The Fine Art of Dissuading People from Collecting Benefits	51
	Leave No Child Behind?: The Inconsistent, Inefficient, and Unfair Way We Support--and Fail to Support--Our Kids	68
	Child's Play: Why Universal, High-Quality Day Care Should Be Elementary	78
	Support for Working Families: What We Can Learn from Europe About Family Policies	90
	Martha Jernegon's New Shoes: The Contribution of Local Living-Wage Ordinances	108
	Ladders to a Better Life: The Role of Career-Ladder Strategies in Marking Work Pay	122
	The Other Gender Gap: Why Women Still Fail to Receive Comparable Wages for Comparable Work	146
	Two Cheers for the Earned Income Tax Credit: It's Great, but No Substitute for Decent Wages	154
	Welfare That Works: The Case for More Generous Formulas to Reward Paid Work	164
	Skills and the Wage Collapse: Better Education and Training Are Only Half the Story	181
	Reforming Welfare Reform: What Reform Wrought, and What Must Be Done Now	196
	About the Contributors	219