Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

The 1996 Welfare Reform Act limited access to welfare for women and children, ultimately removing approximately 4 million women from welfare and into the labor market. As Ehrenreich writes, “In the rhetorical buildup to welfare reform, it was uniformly assumed that a job was the ticket out of poverty and that the only thing holding back welfare recipients was their reluctance to get out and get one” (196). Both Democrats and Republicans were in strong favor of the passage of this act, which was championed by President Bill Clinton, and the legislation was built on the premise that low-wage work will be more effective than welfare at lifting people out of poverty. In the years that followed the act’s passage, social scientists and economists highlighted the lower number of people on welfare and argued that this was proof that the welfare reform act was a success. Ehrenreich notes that this is not at all the case; the act did not provide any sort of requirements for tracking what happened to people after they were no longer receiving welfare benefits.

She notes that the terrible effects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act on the state of poverty were largely obscured by the media.