Social Welfare 101
This term describes the system of programs, benefits, and services that help people meet basic social, economic, educational, and health needs.
What is social welfare?
The 1601 English law that established government responsibility for the poor, and heavily influenced early American welfare policy.
What is the Elizabethan Poor Law?
This official government measure, originally developed by Mollie Orshansky in the 1960s, is still used today to determine eligibility for many programs.
What is the federal poverty line (or poverty threshold)?
This program, formerly known as "food stamps," provides monthly benefits to low-income households to purchase groceries.
What is SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)?
This 2025 federal law made the deepest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in U.S. history.
What is H.R. 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act)?
Social welfare policy can be either residual or this type, which sees services as a normal, first-line function of modern society.
What is institutional?
Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression that established the foundations of the American welfare state.
What is the New Deal?
This concept refers to poverty experienced by people who cycle in and out of poverty over time, rather than being persistently poor.
What is transitional (or episodic) poverty?
The 1996 welfare reform law replaced AFDC with this program, which added work requirements and a 5-year lifetime limit on benefits.
What is TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)?
According to the most recent census data, this percentage of Americans about 35.9 millions people lived below the federal poverty line in 2024, the second lowest rate since the measure began.
This principle holds that individuals are responsible for their own well-being, and government assistance should be minimal.
What is individualism (or self-reliance)?
The landmark 1935 legislation that created Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the first federal assistance to dependent children.
What is the Social Security Act?
This structural explanation for poverty focuses on lack of jobs, low wages, and economic inequality — rather than individual behavior.
What is structural (or systemic) poverty?
This federal tax credit benefits low- and moderate-income workers — especially those with children — and is one of the largest anti-poverty tools in the U.S.
What is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)?
Under H.R. 1, most Medicaid expansion enrollees will be required to document this — at least 80 hours per month — starting at the end of 2026, or lose their coverage.
What are work requirements?
A social welfare policy that targets only the poor is called this, as opposed to a universal policy.
What is selective (or means-tested)?
Lyndon Johnson's domestic policy agenda in the 1960s that declared a "war on poverty" and created Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start.
What is the Great Society?
This term describes the concentration of poverty, unemployment, and social problems in specific urban neighborhoods — the focus of William Julius Wilson's research.
What is concentrated poverty (or the urban underclass)?
Under TANF, states receive a fixed amount of federal funding through this mechanism, giving them flexibility but removing the federal guarantee of assistance.
What is a block grant?
This 2024 Supreme Court decision opened the door for cities to ban homeless encampments, sparking debate about whether the government is criminalizing poverty rather than addressing it.
What is Grants Pass v. Johnson?
This term describes the idea that social welfare policy reflects underlying social values — and that policy disagreements are really disagreements about these.
What are values?
This era of social welfare history, roughly 1890–1920, saw reformers like Jane Addams push for child labor laws, housing reform, and worker protections.
What is the Progressive Era?
This policy concept argues that poverty persists partly because benefits are cut off abruptly when income rises, creating a disincentive to work.
What is the poverty trap (or benefits cliff)?
Critics of TANF argue that this outcome, measured by how many eligible families actually receive benefits, has dropped significantly since 1996, leaving the poorest families unserved.
What is the caseload (or participation/utilization rate)?
The CBO estimates H.R. 1 will result in this many people losing Medicaid coverage by 2034 — a number larger than the entire population of Ohio.
What is 11.8 million people?