In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). PRWORA ended welfare as an entitlement, instead creating a system of reciprocal obligation, requiring welfare recipients to be engaged in work activities and time-limiting the receipt of benefits.
Too Big to Succeed: Righting the Wrongs in the Fight against Poverty
When did it all start to go wrong? In the early 20th Century, Americans fighting poverty not only lost sight of the goal—lifting families up—but even of the problem itself, and instead sought to remake society through government intervention, often at the expense of the very people they were meant to help. In 1920, Owen...