ABSTRACT
The Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988 has been described as the most significant change in the American welfare system in the past fifty years. Changes in lifestyle choices and concerns about persistent poverty and welfare dependency led to this effort to transform the welfare system into a program to help families on public assistance to become self-sufficient, rather than simply to provide cash assistance. At the same time, however, it represents yet another attempt to improve the system through incremental, not large-scale, change.
