And the answer is . . .

Answers to the multiple choice questions. Keep in mind–these are questions from previous terms, so if we haven’t emphasized these points, I wouldn’t test you on them. It’s mainly so you can see how I construct multiple choice questions and responses:

Women generally are responsible for child-rearing in our society. This can complicate their ability to enter the work force. This would be one way to explain

1. the theory of the urban underclass (a non-sequitur–the answer has nothing to do with the question, but it sounds impressive!);
2. women’s difficulties in changing their ascribed or ascriptive statuses (hmm, I know I’ve heard those terms before–must be the right one! Not!!);
3. the ‘devolution’ of the Head Start program to allow for more control by state governments (we didn’t really discuss the term, but for instance block grants versus entitlements often involve control moving from the federal to the state level. But this is another non-sequitur, and we didn’t really discuss Head Start in class, which should be a tip-off–I won’t test you on trivia or obscure minutiae).
4. the process of feminization of poverty (there are more single mothers, and more single parent households more likely to struggle economically . . . depressing, but true. It’s basically a numbers game–single-parent households are more likely to fall into poverty, and women are much more likely to head single-parent households, so poverty programs that don’t address this will lead to . . . feminization of poverty, or households headed by women being disproportionately likely to experience poverty).

What does author Karen Seccombe mean when she says that the ‘welfare problem’ isn’t about welfare, but about the insecurity of low-wage work?

1. Low-wage work doesn’t offer health benefits and may complicate securing child care and affordable housing for many poor single mothers(they could get fired, there are things about welfare that low-wage work doesn’t cover, like insurance, child care, etc., that make receiving welfare the rational choice for someone looking out for their family);
2. Low-wage work doesn’t make single mothers eligible to receive social security (no, but they have to pay into it through the payroll tax … this is a non-sequitur, it has little to do with a program mostly designed for retirement pensions. But working women are eligible for SS benefits just like anyone who pays into it);
3. If poor single mothers had access to low-wage employment, they could begin to develop human capital and work their way out of welfare (or be stuck in a trap that is difficult to escape, given the many other complications of single parenthood that can trip up a household trying to escape poverty);
4. Few women would be willing to have children if they had to rely solely on low-wage employment (yes, poor people too still have the right to have children, sometimes people fall into poverty after a bad break, and people don’t usually make fertility decisions based on their current wage earnings or expected welfare benefit levels).

We didn’t really discuss Seccombe in this class, and I wouldn’t ask a question about her book, but she was in the lecture material, and I put this here just to show you the kinds of questions I might ask, so again don’t worry about stuff you haven’t seen in class (providing you’ve been attending regularly) or in the lecture pages sneaking its way onto the exam.

Lemme give it one more try . . .

So here’s an attempt to get you to think about making connections between concepts. There are a variety of welfare programs, many of them designed to serve the needs of the economically disadvantaged (‘poor’). Despite enormous growth of the US economy, poverty remains an intractable problem in many region of the country (and we’ve discussed explanations for its persistence). Social inequality and more rigid stratification reduce social mobility, increasing the likelihood poor people will remain in poverty, despite the existence of welfare programs (which we can identify and examine), which may in fact embody a philosophy of welfare that blames the poor for over-reliance on government programs that create dependency and seek to push recipients to choose low-wage work over means-tested programs. Participation in these programs can have a stigmatizing effect on a population often considered ‘undeserving.’ Policies like Welfare Reform may have explicit but also latent functions that might lead one to question their true intent.

And change? Until things get pretty bad, and people are overtly expressing serious discontent with government and status quo, which will happen occasionally with an economic system as dynamic as capitalism (with respect to unemployment especially, where the dominant classes begin to feel the pain), the government at least may be reluctant to step in, in fact may instead try suppression.

You get the idea, hopefully.