It Takes a Pillage: Women, Work, and Welfare

The experience of the Appalachian region over the past fifty years makes clear that poverty, low family income, single parenthood, and children in poverty—a pillage—may push women into a highly unfavorable labor market. The same experience makes equally clear that work force participation in areas with high unemployment, low income, high rates of poverty, and female-headed households is unlikely to end the poverty of working women and their families. These conditions and results are not only lamentable but also instructive about the current welfare reform effort. They suggest that welfare reform will mean that the majority of welfare-to-work transitions will move from one form of poverty to another even in good economic times; new and more severe forms of poverty will ensue when markets are left to distribute work, income, and wealth; and women and children will bear the brunt of the new poverty and unmitigated market capitalism. The article suggests public policies to make personal responsibility efficacious.