A Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs: Achievements, Failures, and Lessons presents papers on the war on poverty, dealing with its origins, its education, health, and income maintenance programs, and its community action, legal services, and antidiscrimination policies. The book discusses poverty and social policy in the 1960s and 1970s; the social and political context of the war on poverty; and a decade of policy developments in the income-maintenance system. The text also describes a decade of policy developments in improving education and training for low-income populations; a decade of policy developments in providing health care for low-income families; and the mobilization of low-income communities through community action. 10 Years of legal services for the poor; and a decade of policy-developments in equal opportunities in employment and housing are also considered. Historians and people involved in political sciences will find the book invaluable.

The sixth edition of this annual collection of the year's best work in policy studies. Contributions in this volume reflect the increased emphasis on budget conscious and carefully targeted social programmes. Exemplifying a range of analytic and methodological strategies, this edition features studies from Australia, the United States, West Germany, and Great Britain.

Government agencies spend billions of dollars each year for policy analysis with the expectation that improved policy will follow. Although civil servants conduct some analysis themselves, more frequently they contract with research organizations to assess the probable consequences of new social policies and to answer other policy questions.Jams M. Rogers develops a theory that explains and predicts the impact of policy analysis. He illustrates his theory through welfare reform, where policy analysis is caught in political warfare and has little chance to improve actual policy. During the 1960s and 1970s over $108 million was spent on four unprecedented social scientific experiments to test the effectiveness of a major proposal to reform the welfare system. Now out of favor, the negative income tax was thn considered to be an appealing alternative to welfare. Starting in New Jersey and Pennsylvania during the Johnson administration, the experimental research continued through Carter's term and helped to keep reform proposal and research organizations alive. This book examines the results of these experiments and their effect on Carter's reform attempt—the Program for Better Jobs and Income.One of the author's main conclusions concerns the role of value conflict. If there is strong disagreement within society over the goals of policy, analysis will seldom change the minds of decision makers or influence policy. Policy analysis is more likely to influence thinking and policy if the issue involves low conflict.

This classic book serves as a starting point for any serious discussion of welfare reform. Losing Ground argues that the ambitious social programs of the1960s and 1970s actually made matters worse for its supposed beneficiaries, the poor and minorities. Charles Murray startled readers by recommending that we abolish welfare reform, but his position launched a debate culminating in President Clinton's proposal “to end welfare as we know it.”