Are Visual Depictions of Poverty in the US Gendered and Racialized?

Angela Bos, Bas van Doorn

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to ‘end welfare as we know it’. Four years later, he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, creating the Temporary Aid for Needy Families programme (TANF), which – among other things – imposed work and job training requirements on recipients and implemented lifetime time limits on benefits paid through federal funds. The drive for welfare reform was broadly supported by the public (van Doorn, 2015), but why was it? Understanding the roots of public support for or opposition to welfare state programmes is crucially important, because public opinion and policy are causally related to one another (Miller and Stokes, 1963; Page and Shapiro, 1983; Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson, 2002). Indeed, public opinion is one important explanation for differences between countries in the size of the welfare state (Andreß and Heien, 2001; Brooks and Manza, 2007). In the US case, as we discuss below, there is considerable variance in support for different programmes (with welfare being particularly unpopular), arguably placing some at political risk or even at risk of elimination, whereas others are less vulnerable to cuts.
Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationThe Social Legitimacy of Targeted Welfare: Attitudes to Welfare Deservingness
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

EGS Disciplines

  • Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
  • Political Science
  • Psychology

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