Abstract:
The topic of welfare can start a doozy of a debate. The federal government's role in providing assistance to the needy is a complex and sensitive issue. Why can't our society seem to solve the problem of poverty? This thesis follows a historiographical approach to analyze poverty through two lenses, one social and the other political, because both social understandings of poverty and the political reactions to poverty have changed over time. Using popular (non-scholarly) literature, this work moves through the history of poverty, then into the era of Clinton welfare reform and beyond. The argument of the thesis is that societal views on the causes of poverty have been consistently reductionist and thus, government solutions have been insufficient. The work concludes with possible government solutions and possible courses of action for the reader to take to work for a sustainable end to poverty.
