ABSTRACT
This chapter explores welfare "reform" in historical context and provides a brief overview of the "reforms". It examines the ways in which social scientists wittingly or not justified the regressive social policy initiatives. The chapter argues that social scientists encouraged punitive welfare policy by proposing ideas that legitimized the old view of poor people as lazy, immoral, irresponsible, and in need of social control. From the start, the welfare state punished some groups for not playing by the rules of a game from which they were barred by reason of gender, race, class, personal history, and/or market economics. In addition to positing an undeserving, largely criminal, and black underclass sustained by female-headed households, some liberal intellectuals created support for coercive reforms by arguing that welfare violates core American values. The chapter shows the political feasibility discussion held that the majority of voters would not support programs that contravened these universal core values.
