The Hidden State
This term, often linked to Suzanne Mettler, describes how tax breaks and government subsidies benefit the middle class without them realizing it's a social program.
What is the Submerged State?
This post-WWII program, which provided education and home loans to veterans, was racially unequal due to state-level practices.
What is the G.I. Bill?
This 1996 law, signed by President Clinton, officially ended the federal entitlement to welfare and replaced it with time-limited block grants to states.
What is Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)?
Martha Fineman's core argument is that the concept of autonomy is a myth because humans are born into this state of universal need for care and support.
What is Dependency?
This major health program, established in 1965, covers most Americans aged 65 and older.
What is Medicare?
This popular government benefit, which allows homeowners to deduct mortgage interest from their taxable income, is a prime example of the Submerged State.
What is the Mortgage Interest Deduction?
This 1935 program, the predecessor to TANF, was established with racially discriminatory eligibility and low federal funding, unlike the retirement insurance program.
What is Aid to Dependent Children (ADC)?
The central paradox that Sharon Hays identifies is the impossible demand that poor mothers must be both this and this.
What are a Devoted Parent and a Self-Reliant Worker?
In her analysis of the original Social Security Act, Linda Gordon argues that single mothers who received ADC were considered this, unlike the entitled workers who received Old Age Insurance.
What is Pitied But Not Entitled?
This related 1965 program is a means-tested benefit that provides healthcare coverage to certain low-income adults and families.
What is Medicaid?
This 2008 book by Christopher Howard explores the parts of the American welfare state that are not immediately obvious to citizens.
What is The Welfare State Nobody Knows?
Robert Lieberman details how the legacy of Jim Crow affected the creation of this major federal retirement and disability insurance program.
What is Social Security or Old Age Insurance?
A key conservative argument for welfare reform, articulated by Charles Murray, was that previous policies created these negative incentives for the poor.
What are disincentives to work or marry?
Theda Skocpol noted that many New Deal programs primarily benefited male workers, while women and children were often relegated to this decentralized, means-tested system.
What is Maternalist Policy or Public Assistance?
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included an effort to expand the eligibility of Medicaid, which was later deemed optional for states by this body.
What is the Supreme Court?
The authors of the "Policy-Centered Perspective" argue that policy design can produce this common political effect by hiding benefits and fragmenting recipients.
What is Low Policy Visibility?
According to Lieberman, this political system was the obstacle to crafting a non-racial federal policy, leading to the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from Social Security.
What is the Southern Democratic Bloc?
Joe Soss's research on welfare offices shows that the administrative design of the system often creates this relationship between caseworkers and recipients.
What is a hierarchical, punitive, or surveillance relationship?
Mettler highlights that the use of federalism and state-level administration led to the unequal distribution and this specific negative social outcome for women in Aid to Dependent Children.
What is The Stratification of Social Citizenship?
Douglass Smith describes how the implementation of Medicare became an unexpectedly powerful tool for desegregating this sector in the South.
What are Hospitals or Healthcare Facilities?
A crucial goal of the Submerged State is to promote individualism and this specific American ideal, often obscuring the collective benefits received.
What is Self-Reliance or Individual Responsibility?
Smith's article on Medicare details how this 1964 law forcing desegregation of healthcare facilities through allowing federal agencies to withhold Medicare funds from segregated hospitals.
What is the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Reese's analysis of the backlash against welfare mothers in states like California and New York focuses on the increasing use of this type of restriction to limit access to benefits in the 1970s.
What are legal status restrictions or residency requirements?
According to Fineman, society often transfers the responsibility for universal dependency onto this specific institution, rather than acknowledging it as a collective societal cost.
What is The Private Family?
Jamila Michener analyzes how the ACA, despite its goals, continued to reinforce racial inequality due to its reliance on this factor for health coverage.
What is Employment or Labor Market Participation?