Regulating the Poor: The Public Functions of Welfare

"Regulating the Poor is a classic. Piven and Cloward bring a lot of historical evidence to bear in this book, in making a straightforward argument. Their main contention is that welfare systems play a political function. These systems don’t just exist because we’re good people who want to help those in need, although that’s part of it. They also serve a social control function. Piven and Cloward lay out a cyclical description of how the generosity of social welfare policies have waxed and waned. When there is discord on the horizon, when it looks like folks in poverty are going to be reacting to their economic insecurity in socially disorderly ways—as was the case in the 1960s—policy benefits get more generous. That helps regulate the poor, it keeps them from reacting in a way that might necessitate more fundamental political change. But when the political front is quiet, we cycle back to a less generous system in order to position people to be useful in the labor market. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter This is a descriptive account, but the broader point that Piven and Cloward assert is that social welfare policy is not only about goodwill and general principles, it is also about continual attempts by the state to control lower income populations. This is a controversial contention. But Piven and Cloward provoked political scientists to grapple with it. That is why this book is important. The primary reason for regulating the poor, as far as Piven and Cloward are concerned, is to support the market economy and maintain social order. When we need more labourers in the market, we pull back welfare benefits and we get people who are willing to take any job. While I think there is much truth to their contentions, there are other reasons for regulating poor people. One of those reasons is that, in the US, poor people are disproportionately black and Latino; they’re racial ‘others.’ “In the US, poor people are disproportionately black and Latino; they’re racial ‘others’” Historically, this points to reasons beyond the economic for motivating the public and political elites in the US to want to ensure that they can control and take punitive measures against not just poor people in general, but against poor people of colour in particular. To the extent that the UK and other western welfare states are more generous, one of the main differentiating factors is race. But that is only part of the story. There is a substantial literature around comparative welfare states that traces why the United States welfare state is underdeveloped."