An Origin of Welfare Stigma

The Great Depression affected millions of families throughout the United States in the 1930s. The federal government finally stepped up in 1935 to create a comprehensive program to address the staggering need of the impoverished in the country. That year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally signed into law the Social Security Act, a landmark bill that not only created the Social Security Program, but also the Assistance to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC). With AFDC, however, came the continued stigmatization of welfare in the United States (Handler and Hollingsworth, 1969). Since the 1960s, “the hallmarks of the AFDC family as portrayed in the press... [are] the recurrent themes of alcoholism, mental deficiency, promiscuity, illegitimacy, and a general unwillingness to participate in the economic life of the community...”. A Gallup Poll conducted in 1965 showed that critics of welfare characterized welfare recipients as “dishonest and lazy... lacking initiative” (Miller, 1965). This paper explains the origins of that representation. Drawing on modern psychological research, it shows how differing models of agency employed by the working and middle class help explain the existence of welfare stigma. The paper is split into five different sections. First, it reviews the two different models of agency used by the middle and working class. It examines how individuals grounded in each model of agency might interpret a decision to enroll in welfare differently. Second, the paper explains why the middle class model of agency has become the prevalent model. Third, it shows how this model of agency contributes to welfare stigma through the conceptualization of stigma. Fourth, it addresses a potential counterargument to this understanding of welfare stigma, namely that all government assistance is stigmatized, regardless of models of agency. Lastly, it describes some of the legal implications of this new understanding of welfare stigma. The paper outlines how middle class legislators designed welfare reform for working class individuals through a middle class model of agency in the 1996 welfare reform bill. I also discuss how an understanding of differing models of agency may shape future welfare reform.