Ben-Shalom, Yonatan, Moffitt, Robert & Scholz, John Karl.
What is happening to the US welfare state? According to this column, and contrary to the views of many, the US welfare state has not been going through a significant retrenchment over the last two decades but has in fact been growing. However, it adds that there has been a shift in who benefits over that period, with several types of families left behind.
The level of governmental expenditures on welfare state and safety-net programmes in the US is once again a subject of intense controversy. Conservative commentators and legislators argue that those expenditures have grown too much and need to be cut back in the face of growing deficits (Rector et al. 2009). Some continue to argue that the US has seen a growing rate of welfare dependency and a decline in work by the poor because of welfare programmes (see Mead 2000 for an older statement of this position), following up on original argument that welfare programmes may have actually increased poverty (Murray 1986). Liberals argue that the government has retrenched drastically over the last 15 years, leaving many poor without a safety net (Edelman 2003; Blank and Kovak 2009).
Πηγή: Voxeu