Poor People, General & Miscellaneous Social Services, Child Welfare & Family Services, Social Policy by Region, Poverty - Public Policy, Welfare - Service & Policies
Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
In one of the most provocative books ever published on America's social welfare system, economist Janet Currie argues that the modern social safety net is under attack. Unlike most books about antipoverty programs, The Invisible Safety Net trains its focus not on cash welfare, but on the staples of today's American welfare system: Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, WIC, and public housing. These programs, Currie maintains, form an effective, if largely invisible and haphazard safety net, and yet they are the very programs most vulnerable to political attack and misunderstanding. A complement to books such as Nickel and Dimed, The Invisible Safety Net will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.Editorials
RealChangeNews.org
Currie's book . . . is engaging and free of both jargon and ideology. . . . [S]he has laid out a reform agenda that could guide modern-day Moynihans in their fight against political pressure to sacrifice the safety net on the altar of national security.PsycCRITIQUES
Currie has performed a commendable service to readers of multiple disciplines. This volume traces changes to the welfare system as it issues a warning about the potential for undercutting the ability of poor children and families to thrive and develop as the welfare system is transformed. [This book] provides a wonderful primer on public policy for psychologists and others who are interested in the welfare of children and families.— Michael B. Blank and Marlene M. Eisenberg
Big Issue in the North
Currie's book will never be mistaken for beach reading. But it is engaging and free of both jargon and ideology.— Michael Brus
PsycCRITIQUES
Currie has performed a commendable service to readers of multiple disciplines. This volume traces changes to the welfare system as it issues a warning about the potential for undercutting the ability of poor children and families to thrive and develop as the welfare system is transformed. [This book] provides a wonderful primer on public policy for psychologists and others who are interested in the welfare of children and families.Big Issue in the North
Currie's book will never be mistaken for beach reading. But it is engaging and free of both jargon and ideology." RealChangeNews.org hael Brus
Currie's book . . . is engaging and free of both jargon and ideology. . . . [S]he has laid out a reform agenda that could guide modern-day Moynihans in their fight against political pressure to sacrifice the safety net on the altar of national security.
Education Week
In-kind programs have long been neglected in discussions of the welfare system in the United States. . . . At a time when funding and other support for public assistance is shrinking, [Currie] contends, the profile of this safety net must be raised, lest it be dismantled before its importance is realized.International Social Security Review
[Janet Currie] offers specific reforms for improving . . . [anti-poverty] programs . . . and concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net.Book Details
Published
March 6, 2006
Publisher
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2006.
Pages
224
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780691122687