From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965

In 1996, Democratic president Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress “ended welfare as we know it” and trumpeted “workfare” as a dramatic break from the past. But, in fact, workfare was not new. Jennifer Mittelstadt locates the roots of the 1996 welfare reform many decades in the past, arguing that women, work, and welfare were intertwined concerns of the liberal welfare state beginning just after World War II.

Mittelstadt examines the dramatic reform of Aid to Dependent Childre...