Search Results for: war on poverty

NCSW Part 2: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Economic Independence

Far-reaching changes have occurred in social work during the last century. When the National Conference was created in the early 1870’s the common idea was that, for the most part, poverty (and dependency) was the result of personal failure, a flaw in the moral character of the individual; the individual, therefore, not society, was responsible for economic independence. Indeed, it was widely believed that the economic and social order could not operate successfully if the state, through its poor laws, undermined the work incentive by providing citizens a degree of security through public assistance.

Orshansky, Mollie

Remembering Mollie Orshansky—The Developer of the Poverty Thresholds by Gordon M. Fisher Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 68 No. 3, 2008 Introduction: In a federal government career that lasted more than four decades, Mollie Orshansky worked for the Children’s…

American Social Policy in the 1960’s and 1970’s

As the decade of the 1960s began, the United States had the “highest mass standard of living” in world history.1 The strong American postwar economy of the late 1940s and 1950s continued into the 1960s.

Defining Community

Until the Civil War to be oriented to the community as a social reference was in conflict with Individualism which was the dominant American philosophy. The way these ideas played against each other illuminates an important part of the American experience, one that continues to be active today.

Aid To Dependent Children: The Legal History

For its first three decades, AFDC operated much like a private charity, with its case workers given discretion in investigating clients, cutting off benefits to those determined to be unsuitable, and reducing benefits to those found in violation of any of AFDC’s myriad regulations. Starting in the mid-1960s the National Welfare Rights Organization, built primarily by African American women and functionally a part of the civil rights movement, began organizing to defend welfare recipients’ rights.

Social Welfare Developments, 1951-2000

1955 National Association of Social Workers founded by a merger of seven social work membership groups. 1962 Michael Harrington’s The Other America is published, awakening the American public to the nation’s increasing level of poverty. 1963 March on Washington DC for Jobs and Freedom 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Title II and Title…

Aid for Dependent Children

Aid To Dependent Children: The Legal History By Linda Gordon, Professor of History, New York University and Felice Batlan, Professor of Law, Chicago Kent School of Law Aid to Dependent Children or ADC (later renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC) was Title IV of the Social Security Act of 1935. At first it…