THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WELFARE: SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND THE CONSTRAINTS ON WORK RELIEF IN THE 1930'S (SOCIAL SECURITY ACT)

• Main Author: ROSE, NANCY ELLEN
• Language: ENG
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 1985
• Subjects: Economic history
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8602685

This dissertation develops a theory of the functioning of a welfare, or income-maintenance, system in the United States economy; it tests this theory with evidence from the 1930's. Our current welfare system grows out of the 1935 Social Security Act, passed during the Great Depression of the 1930's and after two years of the New Deal. The original Act contained many welfare provisions, but conspicuously absent from it was any form of work relief. Yet work relief had been the primary thrust of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the New Deal relief program that preceded the Social Security Act. This dissertation explains why work relief was dropped from the Social Security Act. It first develops a theory of welfare and welfare reform which specifically addresses the nature of work relief. This theory seeks to explain the evolution of a system of relief as a function of two influences: the constraints imposed by a capitalist economic system; and the strength of political actors who attempt to make the system conform as much as possible to their demands. It posits three consequent reproductive relations, or constraints, placed on a welfare system: (1) maintaining a stigma attached to relief so that people will be encouraged to hold low-paying jobs; (2) maintaining welfare payments at levels that do not interfere with the functioning of labor markets; and (3) basing work relief on principles that are congruent with the logic of the market, i.e. profit criteria. It then shows that some programs of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration violated these constraints to such a great degree that the subsequent protests from capitalists resulted in the exclusion of all work relief from the permanent Social Security Act, and its legislation instead through the temporary Works Progress Administration. The lack of provision for permanent federal work relief then left space in local work relief programs for the resumption of the worktest. This study can inform current debates on the welfare system through its analysis of the complex relationship between work and welfare. It also evaluates various past and currently-proposed welfare programs, and examines the limits of welfare reform.