Week 1

• Welfare basics
• Key concepts
• Poverty and inequality
• Structure, agency and social welfare
• From Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods’:
  • 2 schools compared
  • Lareau’s thesis (childrearing as ‘concerted cultivation’ or ‘natural growth’)
• Summing up week 1

Week 2

• Theories on Culture of poverty, the underclass
• Is rural poverty different?
• Systems of privilege
• Class discussion outline

Week 3

• Social welfare: Historical highlights
• Brief primer on capitalism
• Welfare as regulation of the poor (graphic)
• The 1960s and welfare
• Post 1960s: Business fights back
• Does poverty have its beneficiaries (brief discussion of Gans’ article)?
• Class discussion outline

Week 4

• Some basic questions to ask about welfare programs
• Welfare programs
• (from Unequal Childhoods) Comparing households

Week 5

• ‘Work ethic’ and welfare reform
• Bureaucracy (and summary)
• Summary (of Sharon Hays’ chapter 2)
• Lareau’s research and social welfare
• Looking back