ABSTRACT

In the US, welfare policy reforms and a robust economy have contributed to a decline of almost 48 percent in public assistance rolls between 1993 and 1999. Since the mid-1980s, policy reforms have been initiated to limit and reshape the major programs serving unemployed people—public assistance, unemployment, and disability—along several dimensions, which usually has been made more restrictive. Welfare advocates claim that the city is taking advantage of needy applicants forcing them to work at below union scale. While transfers such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and measures that lower tax rates on earned income and withdrawal rates on welfare payments can provide social supplements to make employment pay for workers able to enter the labor force, those left behind pose a greater challenge. City officials claim that the workfare recipients are doing community service in a program designed to teach basic work habits: showing up on time; working in a team, and accepting supervision.