Welfare Reform and Charity in U.S. History

Stephen T ZiliakArticles, essays, book chapters, and reviews on welfare reform and charity in the United States, by Stephen T. Ziliak

 

Associate editor and author, Public Assistance: Colonial Times to the 1920s (Stephen T. Ziliak with the assistance of Joan Underhill Hannon), Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to the Present (Cambridge University Press and U. S. Bureau of the Census, 2006).  General Eds. Susan B. Carter, Richard Sutch. 

             Not a lot changed during the first 400 years of welfare.  Strange but true.  See Important legislation and events affecting social welfare policy: 1601–1997, compiled by Stephen Ziliak, Joan Hannon, and Price Fishback, and Melissa Thomasson.

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If you’re excited about privatization and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, read Stephen T. Ziliak’s Self-Reliance Before the Welfare State: Evidence from the Charity Organization Movement in the United States, Journal of Economic History 64 (2, June 2004): 433-461.

Reagan and Hayek, looking nervous. Most predictions about the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s prove to be incorrect - a fact which I predicted in a series of articles comparing 19th and 20th century attempts at welfare reform.
Reagan and Hayek, looking nervous. Most predictions about the effects of welfare reform in the 1980s and 90s prove to be incorrect – a fact which I predicted in a series of historical articles comparing 19th and 20th century attempts at welfare reform.

And: Stephen T. Ziliak’s Kicking the Malthusian Vice: Lessons from the Abolition of `Welfare’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 37 (2, Summer 1997), pp.  449-68.  Published in a special issue on the comparative history of welfare reform, 19th and 20th century: with Robert Margo, Joan Underhill Hannon, Kyle Kauffman, and Lynn Kiesling. Here is the pdf: Kicking the Malthusian Vice _ Ziliak thesis chp-1995

And especially: Stephen T. Ziliak, The End of Welfare and the Contradiction of Compassion, The Independent Review I (1, Spring 1996), pp. 55-73.

mlk jrNow for something completely different, but also true: Stephen T. Ziliak’s Pauper Fiction in Economic Science: `Paupers in Almshouses’ and the Odd Fit of Oliver Twist, Review of Social Economy 55 (2, June 2002), pp. 159-181.  Winner of the 2002 Helen Potter Award for “Best Article in Social Economics,” Association for Social Economics.

Who's closer to the facts of welfare recipients, economists or novelists? Read my 2002 article on "Pauper Fiction," published in the Review of Social Economy
Who’s closer to the facts of welfare history, economists or novelists? Read my article, “Pauper Fiction,” published in the Review of Social Economy (Winner of Best Article in Social Economics Award 2002, ASA)

See also:

Stephen T. Ziliak, Some Tendencies of Social Welfare and the Problem of Interpretation, Cato Journal 21 (3, Winter 2002), pp. 499-513.

Stephen T. Ziliak, Poor Law—United States.  Pp. 274-7 in John M. Herrick and Paul H. Stuart, eds., Encyclopedia of Social Welfare in the United States (New York: Sage Publications, 2004).

Stephen T. Ziliak review of A. B. Atkinson’s The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the Welfare State (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), Journal of Economic Literature  39 (1, March 2001), pp. 144-6. Ziliak JEL review of Atkinson Welfare State

Ziliak review of Paul A. Jargowsky’s Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (1997), Journal of Economic History 58(1), March 1998, pp. 264-266.

Ziliak review of Ada F. Haynes’ Poverty in Central Appalachia (1997), Journal of Economic History 58(1), March 1998, pp. 264-266.

Ziliak review of Irwin Unger’s The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (1996), Economic History Association, EH-Net, October 1998.

Ziliak review of James L. Payne’s Overcoming Welfare: Expecting More from the Poor and from Ourselves (New York: Basic Books, 1998), The Independent Review IV (1, Summer 1999), pp. 144-7.

Ziliak review of Michael J. Graetz and Jerry L. Mashaw’s True Security: Rethinking American Social Insurance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), Journal of Economic History (June 2000).

Ziliak review of Gary R. Lowe and P. Nelson Reid’s The Professionalization of Poverty: Social Work and the Poor in the Twentieth Century (Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999), Journal of Economic History (Fall 2000).

Zilaik review of Dwight B. Billings and Kathleen M. Blee’s The Road to Poverty: the Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Journal of Interdisciplinary History  32 (1, Summer 2001), pp. 144-6.

Ziliak review of David Hammack’s, ed., Making the Non-Profit Sector in the United States: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), Journal of Economic History (March 2001).

Ziliak review of Hugo A. Keuzenkamp’s Probability, Econometrics, and Truth: The Methodology of Econometrics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Journal of Economic History 61 (2, June 2001), pp. 578-80.

Ziliak review of Joel Schwartz’s Fighting Poverty with Virtue: Moral Reform and America’s Urban Poor, 1825-2000 (Indiana University Press, 2000), The Independent Review 6 (2, Spring 2002).

Ziliak review of Alice O’Connor, Chris Tilly, and Lawrence D. Bobo, eds., Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities, Journal of Economic History 61 (4, Dec. 2001), pp. 1145-6.

Ziliak review of Steven King’s Poverty and welfare in England, 1700-1850 (Manchester University Press, 2000), Economic History Association, EH-Net, October 2001.

Ziliak review of Steven King’s Poverty and welfare in England, 1700-1850, Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Fall 2002).

Ziliak review of Robert A. Margo’s Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820- 1860, International Review of Social History 47 (3, Dec. 2002), pp. 496-99.

Ziliak review of Sheldon Danziger and Robert Haveman, ed., Understanding Poverty, Journal of Economic History 62 (4, Dec. 2002), pp. 1165-6.

Ziliak review of Jeffrey Sklansky’s The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920, Journal of Economic History 63 (3, 2003), pp. 903-5.

Ziliak review of Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie’s Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, Journal of Economic History 64 (1, March 2004), pp. 273-4.

Ziliak review of Peter Saunder’s The End and Means of Welfare, Economic Record 80 (250, September 2004), pp. 346-57.

Ziliak review of Jonathan A. Glickstein’s American Exceptionalism/American Anxiety: Wages, Competition, and Degraded Labor in the Antebellum United States, International Review of Social History 49 (2, 2004).

Ziliak review of Jocelyn Elise Crowley’s The Politics of Child Support in America, EH-Net (the on-line publication of the Economic History Association).  March 2004.