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Reassessing the Conventional Wisdom: Entitlements from the Inside

  • Andrea Louise Campbell

    Andrea Louise Campbell is Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies political behavior and public policy, particularly health, social, and tax policy. Her books include How Policies Make Citizens (Princeton, 2003), The Delegated Welfare State with Kimberly J. Morgan (Oxford, 2011), and Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle (Chicago, 2014), upon which these observations are based.

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Published/Copyright: April 10, 2015
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Abstract

A family tragedy enables a social policy scholar to examine how American social assistance works from the recipient perspective. The experience results in a reexamination of conventional wisdom around US social policy. In contrast to the revisionist account, meager social assistance programs are still pretty meager. Despite the bifurcation between deserving and undeserving beneficiaries, some deserving populations are swept into catch-all means-tested programs and fare badly. Finally, the experience forces a new look at research approaches to social policy. More qualitative and ethnographic work is needed, as well as examinations of the interactions among multiple programs and their complicated and often contradictory rules.


Corresponding author: Andrea Louise Campbell, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., E53-461, Cambridge, MA 02139, e-mail:

About the author

Andrea Louise Campbell

Andrea Louise Campbell is Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies political behavior and public policy, particularly health, social, and tax policy. Her books include How Policies Make Citizens (Princeton, 2003), The Delegated Welfare State with Kimberly J. Morgan (Oxford, 2011), and Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle (Chicago, 2014), upon which these observations are based.

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Published Online: 2015-4-10
Published in Print: 2015-4-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

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