This study focuses on the welfare reform in the mid 1990s, collecting data from 50 states. They seek to find out if representation has an effect on welfare policymaking. The researchers have two hypotheses that are tested with two different approaches. The first hypothesis is a single axis hypothesis, “The greater the incorporation of women in the state legislature, the more generous, accessible, flexible, and lenient the state welfare policy.” They control for all of the Black and Latino legislators. They test this with an additive model and the findings reveal contradictions. The presence and power of all legislators appear to have no impact at all on TANF policies.

However when tested with an intersectional approach we see different results The second hypothesis tests to see the potential impact of three different groups- gender and race/ethnicity: women of color, other “white” women, and men of color. The findings reveal that legislative women of color do play a distinct role in welfare policymaking. When examining TANF cash benefits, white women’s projected cash benefit decreases from $531 to $497 compared to women of color, predicted cash benefits increase from $501 to $527. In conclusion, the intersectional model is crucial in understanding women of color role in welfare policymaking. While the additive model when testing all hides the impact of the state legislator’s gender and race/ethnicity.

Beth Reingold and Adrienne R. Smith, “Welfare Policymaking and Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in U.S. State Legislatures,” American Journal of Political Science 56, no. 1 (2011): , doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00569.x.

The image of the Welfare Queen has played a prominent role in the public discourse of welfare which in turn shapes public opinion. This demonstrates the politics of disgust, the Welfare Queen was used to categorize all welfare recipients as “lazy.” Our past president Ronald Reagan described women having countless children to collect many checks and that they would trade food stamps for cigarettes and alcohol. The gendered racism that recipients of welfare have to face were overall attributed to their own personal failures rather than the structural flaws of the market. It is no coincidence that 90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. The overall study demonstrates that there is an intersection of race, gender, class on public opinion on welfare.

The data was taken from two public opinion surveys, the “Poverty in America” survey conducted by National Public Radio, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government, and the “Race and Politics” survey conducted by the Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley.  Logistic regression models were used to analyze the data, as well as Beta to determine the strength of relationship in the variables from the Poverty in America survey. In the National Race and Politics Survey they asked “experimental questions in which a hypothetical welfare mother with a 10 year old child is described to half of the respondents as a black woman, and to the other half of the respondents as a white woman. Respondents are then asked to predict how likely it is that this racially defined hypothetical welfare mother will “try hard to find a job in next year” and how likely it is that she will “have another child to get a bigger welfare check.”  The findings revealed that 54% believed that welfare recipients do not try very hard to find work and 61% thought mothers had children for financial gain. The respondents opinions are influenced by race, gender, and class. Overall, the public opinion of the Welfare Queen shapes their views on welfare.

Foster, C. H. (2008). THE WELFARE QUEEN: RACE, GENDER, CLASS, AND PUBLIC OPINION. Race, Gender & Class, 15(3), 162-179. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/218869573?accountid=14729

Past research has focused on attitudes toward public spending on welfare. This study is unique in that it will focus on Americans views toward welfare restrictions. As we examine history we see that the welfare state has imposed many restrictions on its recipients. Such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 with the creation of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) required for the first time that mothers work in exchange for public assistance and time limits. These restrictions are based off the belief that recipients are lazy and have to learn to become independent and self sufficient, but what about external forces? What about high unemployment and low wages, how will they be independent if society at large is not offering opportunities for them to make a living?

The first research question asks, “Are those respondents who believe that Blacks and Hispanics are lazy more likely to favor work requirements and reducing benefits on welfare?” second, “Are those respondents who believe that poverty is caused by a lack of effort by the poor more likely to favor work requirements and benefit reductions on welfare” third, “Are those who believe that income should be determined primarily by work more likely to favor work requirements and benefit reductions on welfare?  And lastly, “What is the effect of demographic versus attitudinal variables on attitudes toward welfare?”

The data is a correlational study because it aims to analyze variables, the dependent variables being support for work requirements and reducing welfare benefits. The hypothesis is “public’s demographic membership (i.e. race, gender, and class) significantly affects their attitudes toward minorities, the poor, and work, which in turn impacts their support for welfare restrictions.” The type of data are reports of acts and demographic data. The data analyzed was from the General Social Survey of 1990 which was collected from interviews of US households conducted by the National Opinion and Research Center. The date was analyzed through logistic regression models. The findings revealed reinforcing work ethic are the reasons for work requirements on welfare regardless of the respondents class, race, and gender. The study overall aimed to see if  demographic variables have an effect on one’s views on welfare restrictions. However work ethic is such a fundamental part of our society that it drives social policy such as welfare.
Harris, C. A. (2002). WHO SUPPORTS WELFARE REFORM AND WHY? Race, Gender & Class, 9(1), 96. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/218870408?accountid=14729

The research proposal was made to the National Welfare Grants, Health and Welfare Canada. The study aims to shed light on people with HIV/AIDS and how they navigate social service agencies. So much of people’s lives with HIV/AIDS is based on their access to health care, in the proposal referring it  as their “lifework.” The study is unique in that it’s from the perspective of the people receiving the services and their interactions with social service workers. The study would like to explore the “legislation, regulation, policy directives, and standard paperwork practices that organize the interface between people with HIV/AIDS and social agencies from the institutional side.” The questions they ask are: “What characteristic problems emerge? How are such problems generated by the interplay between the HIV/AIDS configuration of life problems and the institutional structure within which social service agency employees work? How do the conditions of the everyday work of living with HIV/AIDS, the organization of that work, and its relation to social service agencies vary with different social locations (e.g class, gender, injection drug use, ethnicity, race..) of these people? And lastly what effect does the stage of someone’s illness have on this organizational matrix?”

The data that would be used for the study are: focus groups, in depth interviews, archival research, and textual analysis. The form of the study is an institutional ethnography because it would explore how the social service agencies operate in relation to HIV/AID patients. Overall interviews would be conducted from major community based AID organizations,  organizational data would include general welfare assistance to housing agencies etc, and documents would include legislation, agency applications, and other bureaucratic forms. The analysis used for this study would examine the “social relations” as an “investigational technique for locating and describing the social form of people’s activities over time.” The researcher would examine “empirically how people’s activities are reflexively/recursively knitted together into particular forms of organization” The research proposal was clear with its focus. It also offers a new discussion on recipients of social service agencies. However, the proposal is from 1990 and thus the treatment and social services of HIV/AIDS has changed since then so if we were to carry out the study today it would produce differing results.

Smith, Dorothy E. Institutional ethnography as practice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

The research questions that the study analyzed were, “What are the different socio-demographic characteristics between TANF leavers who reach their lifetime limits and those who exit voluntarily?” and “What are the employment and family income differences between TANF leavers who reach their lifetime limits and those who exit voluntarily?The data was collected by the National Survey of America’s Family, they analyzed a total of 656 TANF leavers from the 50 states from 1999 to 2002. The results of the study demonstrates that TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limit were less likely to be employed and have high family income.  Due to these findings one can conclude that there should be an extension on the lifetime limit and to implement follow up services.

The method of data analysis was found with multiple regression results, chi square, and t test results. Through chi square and t test analysis they wanted to see if there was a difference in socio-demographic characteristics between TANF leavers and those who left voluntarily. The study also used correlation to determine the significance between the independent and dependent variables. The independent variables being lifetime limits, state household median income, high school degree/GED, child care assistance, health problems, and immigrants, married, female. The two dependent variables are employment and family income. While “the multiple regressions were used to find the employment and family income differences between TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limits and those who exited voluntarily.”

The results were telling, those who left TANF because of lifetime limits were found to have more mental health/physical problems, less employment, less family income,  and less EITC. Overall, this study revealed that TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limits had economic hardships due to high unemployment and low income. The study is significant in its findings because they compared TANF leavers and voluntary leavers at a national level. We need to implement follow up social services for TANF leavers which would shape the way we think about welfare public policy.

Lee, Kyoung Hag. “Effect of Lifetime Limits and Differences between TANF Leavers Who Had Reached Their Lifetime Limits and Those Who Had Exited Voluntarily.” Poverty & Public Policy 2.4 (2010): 689-710. Wiley Library. Web.

The Journal, Poverty and Public Policy featured an article titled, “Progressive State Taxes and Welfare.” The goal of the study is to analyze how progressive tax systems are linked to the number of welfare recipients. There are differing views when it comes to income distribution. Classical fiscal federalism argues that income distribution should happen at the federal level. However, the states also have power in enforcing their own progressive tax systems which support social services, such as welfare. This produces varied tax redistribution based on their goals. The study answered two questions, “First, do progressive tax structures effectively redistribute income? Second, does a progressive tax system reduce the number of welfare caseloads in a state?”

The type of data used was aggregate, “the welfare recipients, state-specific information on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs (and Aid to Families with Dependent Children for years prior to 1997), multiple measures of tax progressivity, and demographic variables”– which were from 50 states from the years of 1990 to 2002. The study used two measures to determine state progressivity “the Revenue Distribution Index (RDI) measured by Bahl, Martinez- Vazquez, and Wallace (2002) and the Average Tax Rate Progressivity Index (ATR). “ The method of analysis was through regression equation which was described in the following tables. Table 1 described the demographic variables used, also variables as the control to measure the differences between states TANF programs and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Table 2 includes statistics of 1990 and 2002.

They concluded that there is a positive relationship between a state’s tax progressivity and the number of welfare recipients. These conclusions are significant because we can infer with confidence that a state’s tax policies has great effects. Such as “when a state collects a larger portion of its taxes through historically progressive tax policies, such as personal and corporate income taxes, rather than, for instance, sales taxes, the number of individuals enrolled in the TANF (formerly AFDC) program decreases.”

Smith, Kara D., and Bryan Shone. “Progressive State Taxes and Welfare.” Poverty & Public Policy 8, no. 4 (2016): 430-37. doi:10.1002/pop4.162.

“Don’t Rock the Boat: Women’s Benevolent Sexism Predicts Fears of Marital Violence” Francisca Exposito, M. Carmen Herrera, and Miguel Moya- Universidad de Granada

http://0-journals.sagepub.com.books.redlands.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01539.x

The article examines how Spanish women’s ideology affects their perception on whether a hypothetical husband feels threatened by his wife’s success at work. Benevolent sexism is a sex role attitude where women accept their traditional status as a wife and mother in order to receive men’s protection and provision. A social perception study was conducted. The subjects were 210 undergraduate psychology students at the Universidad de Granada, they read a vignette where a husband and wife argued over her job promotion. Women’s benevolent sexism confirmed the hypothesis that they perceived the husband to feel more threatened by his wife’s success and thus would be more likely to be violent towards her. When provided with background information on the husband’s ideology (traditional, egalitarian, no information) this had no significance. Other data produced  was the scores for ASI (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory)  used to measure hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Thus women who scored higher on benevolent sexism (compared to those who scored low on benevolent sexism) perceived aggression even when the man was egalitarian. The method of data analysis used is, “multiple regression analysis to assess participants’ perceived probability that the husband was threatened as a function of women’s benevolent and hostile sexism scores and the husband’s ideology.” In conclusion, the findings supports the hypothesis that women who endorse benevolent sexism are in psychological conflict where they abide by traditional norms and are threatened if they challenge the status quo; however, they have a desire for intimacy with their partner. The data produced is valid because it further confirms past research where men who are gender traditional are more likely to be aggressive towards women.

Herrera, M. Carmen, and Miguel Moya. “Don’t Rock the Boat: Women’s Benevolent Sexism Predicts Fears of Marital Violence.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 2010): 36-42. doi:10.1111/pwqu.2010.34.issue-3.