Introduction

Over the past 30 years the core US social assistance programme for families with children has been transformed from a focus on the alleviation of need to emphasis on the obligation of adults wanting aid to prepare for and actively seek employment. This transformation accelerated in the 1990s. It is associated with significant decentralisation of governing authority and further distancing of the American welfare model from the principle of relief from poverty as an entitlement of citizenship. The reforms in place as the decade closes - often termed ‘workfare’ - enjoy considerable political support among American voters. They are widely believed to have contributed substantially to the remarkable reduction in public assistance use the US has experienced since 1994. These changes have drawn attention from citizens in other countries, notably in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Responses range from viewing what is happening in the US as a fundamental threat to social democracy to seeing the emerging system as a model worth careful study, if not emulation.

Traditionally, the term workfare has been reserved for transfer schemes that make receipt of cash assistance or other benefits conditional on performing public service jobs. In the new American schemes, the work in workfare is generally defined more broadly to include mandatory participation in a variety of activities intended to accelerate movement from benefit to self-support. This chapter reviews the incidence and character of workfare obligations in the US at the end of the decade – the work of this new workfare.

The American social assistance system

The point of departure for this excursion to workfare-watch is a short review of American social assistance programmes. The US is a federal system, and the country's social assistance system is constructed from a number of building blocks. Assignment of responsibility among the various levels of government differs across these components. The result is that the assistance available, and the obligation associated with that assistance, depends in part on where a poor person lives, and very much on age and family circumstance.

The six programmes

As is true for many other developed countries, in the US the absolute number of programmes providing benefits to persons with limited income is large – 81 means-tested antipoverty programmes, ranging from Medicaid to special immigrant assistance (Burke, 1997).