| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945–1965. By Jennifer Mittelstadt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii plus 267 pp. $49.95, cloth; $19.95, paper).

Jennifer Mittlelstadt, knowing that "small events create larger consequences" (p. 106), has written a very important contribution to U.S. social welfare history. From Welfare to Workfare focuses on the evolution of Aid to Dependent Children from its enactment in the original (1935) Social Security Act to its demise in the (1996) Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. She pays particular attention to crises dominant between the New Deal and the Great Society, a period in which details usually get little attention from social welfare historians. Rather than recount legislative battles at length, or highlight the research of academic superstars and public intellectuals, From Welfare to Workfare offers us an intimate portrait of decent officials struggling (typically working at the second tier in relative obscurity) with issues that haunt us today. In so doing, Mittelstadt adds to our understanding of the varieties of liberalism in policymaking circles after World War II. Her monograph is good policy history: it traces both ingenious strategies as well as missed opportunities to conjoin through Aid to Dependent Children issues surrounding gender, poverty, race, welfare, and employment.

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