Ending Welfare As We Know It (Again): Welfare State Retrenchment, 1989–1995

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children fell victim to a dramatic retrenchment as states submitted waivers, or permission slips to experiment with their public assistance programs by implementing new methods of exclusion and regulation. We find that Republican states were quick to submit federal waivers to the the AFDC program, as were states with high AFDC payments. As Soule and Zylan (1997) found in their study of an earlier wave of welfare retrenchment in the U.S., states with higher minority group populations and heavier AFDC caseloads were quick to pass waivers. Following Pierson (1994, 1996), we find that states with an increasing tax revenue base and with a high proportion of Social Security recipients were quick to submit waivers, while states with a high proportion of Unemployment Insurance recipients were slow to do so. We also find evidence for the geographic diffusion of waiver submission and that states experiencing fiscal crisis were more susceptible to the diffusing of waivers. Finally, we find that states which are traditionally innovative with regard to policy decisions served as referents to other states puzzling over whether or not to submit waivers.