ABSTRACT
As was noted in chapter 1, during the debates about what has euphemistically come to be called “welfare reform,” much attention was focused on the issue of “dependency.” The conservative goal, built into the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, was to bring individuals to a state of economic self-sufficiency—defined more or less as independence from public welfare programs. All able-bodied adults, unless independently wealthy, were to be engaged in work for wages. 2
