What is "Welfare?"
Welfare is a term that people in the U.S. have used in different ways over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the 1930s, the term meant "well-being" and had no attachment to public relief or assistance. In the postwar period, it came to be associated with a specific New Deal program that no longer exists: Aid to Families with Dependent Children. When individuals refer to welfare today, they usually mean social programs that help people experiencing poverty, such as food stamps, housing subsidies, and utility assistance.
The Emergence of "Welfare"
"Welfare" as we know it began during the Great Depression.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was the worst economic crisis the world has ever known. And it led US policymakers to create the welfare state. The Social Security Act of 1935 created a social safety net with two tiers of cash assistance.
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. Social insurance allows workers to rest assured that in times of unemployment and old age, they will still have cash on hand. The tie between wage-earning and Unemployment and Social Security led many Americans to call these "earned benefits."
On the lower tier is means-tested assistance. Disability Insurance and Aid to Dependent Children were designed for populations unable to work. Access to a monthly income through these programs, therefore, required undergoing a "means test." A person only qualifies for Disability if they are disabled. Similarly, an individual qualified for Aid to Dependent Children if they were a dependent (meaning fatherless) child. Since the means-test was divorced from a history of employment, these programs came to be called "unearned benefits" or "handouts."
The New Deal's two-tiered social safety net contributed to the transformation of the term "welfare." In the decades following the 1930s, a person who said "welfare" was referring specifically to Aid to Dependent Children. And the term took on a new definition of means-tested cash assistance.
The Social Security Act of 1935
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The Two-Teired
Social Safety Net
The Demonization of "Welfare"
"Welfare" became a "dirty word" after World War II once African American single mothers gained access to Aid to Dependent Children.
New Deal policymakers imagined Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) as a program that allowed white children to stay at home with their widowed mother. Previously, fatherless children (often called half widows) went into orphanages because their mother could not earn enough money to care for them. New Dealers designed ADC to provide white widows with an income so they could stay home to raise their children.
At first, the program worked as policymakers had imagined. Images that educated the public about the program depicted white mothers and white children. The majority of recipients were white women whose husbands had passed away. The rolls changed in the 1940s and 1950s, however, as more divorced or never-married mothers and women of color gained access.
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Racial
Breakdown
of ADC Cases
in 1961
Data from Premilla Nadasen, “From Widow to ‘Welfare Queen,’” 57; and Nadasen, Welfare Warriors, 7.