Welfare
Reform in Illinois:
Recent Efforts in the Context of the National Debate
Dan A. Lewis, Christine C.
George, and Deborah Puntenney
Abstract
This paper describes welfare reform in Illinois by placing the
policy reform efforts in a much broader context, and showing how
the larger picture helps us understand the role of values in the
state policymaking process. It delineates the consensus approach
to public assistance developed in the late 1960s, which called for
a transfer of power from states to a federally financed system of
welfare. This system provided for the aged, blind, disabled, and
dependent children, as well as assistance in the form of child care
for working mothers, and job training. The paper explores the national
ideological and political factors from which policy efforts originated
in Illinois, as well as its changing economic, and the political
culture in which the state handled welfare reform. It brings its
historic review into the present where responsibility for social
welfare has once again shifted to the states.
The paper concludes that Illinois's social welfare laws and programs
have not been motivated by values of redistribution and egalitarianism.
Instead it claims they have been molded by a conservative tradition
that believes equalities produced by state policy constrain personal
freedom and threaten economic growth because they weaken the economic
incentives to work and to take undesirable jobs. The authors suggest
that welfare be redefined so as to fit more easily within the business-oriented
political culture of the state, and offer several recommendations
for action.
Dan A. Lewis, School of Education
and Social Policy, Northwestern University Christine C. George, Doctoral candidate, School of Education
and Social Policy, Northwestern University Deborah Puntenney, Doctoral candidate, School of Education
and Social Policy, Northwestern University
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