During the Great Depression, the Social Security Act of 1935 created a two-tiered American welfare state. On the higher tier is social insurance. Social Security and Unemployment Insurance are programs that Americans can apply for IF they have a history of employment. Through wages and payroll taxes, citizens gain the right to claim these benefits. On the lower tier is means-tested assistance. Disability Insurance and Aid to Dependent Children (later renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children) were designed for populations unable to work. Access to a monthly income through these programs, therefore, required undergoing a “means test.” Based on this divide, some cash benefits were “earned,” and others were “unearned.” In the decades following the Great Depression, U.S. citizens started using the term “welfare” in a derogatory way to refer to “unearned” benefits, broadly, and Aid to Dependent Children, specifically. Life on welfare was not easy because miserly benefit levels meant families could not afford all of the necessities of life. Single mothers had to decide between paying for groceries, heat, or other bills. This module's sources characterize the impoverished conditions that welfare recipients endured, such as nutritionally deficient diets, inadequate clothing, and an inability to pay bills. Single mothers had to find other ways of meeting their children's needs or do without basic necessities. 
      The two sources in this module detail the difference between cash assistance and expenses for six households. The second source explains how five single mothers stretched their cash as far as possible and what necessities they had to forego. In 1967, Gwendowlyn Louise Gaston wrote out her budget and published it in community newspapers to demonstrate that she simply could not afford a decent life on her current benefits. The year prior, five other mothers testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about their inability to escape welfare because their benefits trapped them in poverty. These women publicized their stories to persuade policymakers and voters to support increasing Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments. Their stories pushed back against a growing perception that economically disadvantaged mothers chose to stay on welfare, instead of entering the workforce, because cash assistance allowed them to live a life of luxury. Welfare rights activists, such as the women in these sources, used their own experiences as evidence of the inadequacies of means-tested cash assistance, the American welfare state's lower tier.