The new face of welfare: From income transfers to social assistance?

In one telling, the contemporary welfare reform narrative about poor families with children is straightforward. Passage of the Family Support Act (FSA) by Congress in 1988 challenged states to strengthen policies requiring welfare recipients to work or prepare for work. At the state level, a plethora of waiver-based reform activities subsequently pushed the work agenda much further than FSA required and, in addition, envisioned unanticipated directions for reform. The confidence engendered in many states by their introduction of increasingly ambitious initiatives paved the way for structural reform of the national social safety net. In 1996, passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) substantially altered the way we think about welfare in the United States.